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# The notch

The managed Heard app lives in two places: the menu bar and the notch. The notch is the visual half of Heard, think of it as a Dynamic Island for your coding agents: a compact pill around the Mac's camera housing that expands with live activity. It shows every active coding session as a lane, pops forward when something finishes or needs you, and collapses back to a slim pill when nothing does.

## Collapsed

Collapsed, the notch shows a compact pill with an activity sprite and the number of active sessions. It stays out of the way while agents work.

## Expanded

Hover the notch to expand it. Each active session appears as a lane with:

* The project name and branch, using your `.heard.yaml` label when one exists
* The agent and tool for that session
* A status mark: working, idle, waiting on you, running in the background, or done

Click a lane to jump to that session's terminal. Click anywhere outside the notch to collapse it.

## Questions and approvals

When an agent asks a question or waits on an approval, the notch expands on its own and shows the question as a focused card with its options. Click an option to answer, or on [Heard Power](/heard-power), hold the talk key and answer out loud. The notch stays open until the question is answered.

## Completions

When a session finishes, the notch pops a focused done card for that session, so you can read the result and click through to the terminal. It collapses again after a few seconds unless you are hovering it.

## Views

The expanded notch has two views:

| View                  | What it shows                                                                                                                 |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Dashboard**         | All active sessions as lanes                                                                                                  |
| **Turn view** (Power) | The running conversation, your prompts and the agents' replies, as a single thread, with a composer to reply by text or voice |

Set the default view in [Settings](/settings), and switch between them from the expanded notch.

## Hide the notch

Prefer audio only? Turn the notch off from the Heard menu bar or in [Settings](/settings). Narration continues either way.

The notch is available on every plan. It pairs naturally with Focus mode: the screen stays quiet and glanceable while only decisions, blockers, and failures speak.