Side by side
Crowny’s column is ours. Droppy’s column comes from its own pages (sources below), checked on 1 October 2026. A dash means the source does not mention it, not that the app lacks it.
| Feature | Crowny | Droppy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $5 one-time (list $15) | $9.99 one-time |
| How you pay | Pay once, 14-day refund, every version 1 update | One-time, 2 Macs, 3-day trial, 14-day refund |
| Open source | No | Source available (GPL-3.0 with Commons Clause) |
| macOS | 15+, Apple Silicon | 14+, Apple Silicon or Intel |
| Latest version | 0.1.0 | — |
| AI coding agent sessions | YesClaude Code, Codex, Grok | YesClaude, Codex, Cursor, Antigravity |
| Approve agent prompts in the notch | YesClaude Code; Codex shows when it waits | — (not listed) |
| AI plan usage limits | YesClaude 5-hour and weekly | YesPlan limits |
| Music / now playing | YesSpotify, Apple Music, YouTube | YesSpotify, Apple Music |
| Calendar | YesGoogle, iCloud, Outlook | — (not listed) |
| Meetings | YesOne-tap Join | YesZoom, Teams, Meet controls |
| File shelf | Yes | YesShelf and floating basket |
| Clipboard history | Yes | Yes |
| Timers / focus | YesFocus, timer, stopwatch, alarms | YesPomodoro |
| Games | YesSnake, Tetris, 2048, Flappy | — (not listed) |
| Weather | Yes | — (not listed) |
| Volume / brightness HUD | No | YesVolume, brightness, backlight |
| Works without a notch | YesA pill under the menu bar | Yes |
| Also | Reminders, notes, GitHub graph, Gmail and Apple Mail, pinned sites; Water, stand and eye-break nudges, held during focus; AirPods and Mac battery; Always on or Minimal mode; Colourful or Black & white; About 0.1% CPU at rest | Floating basket for drags; Extensions: window snap, OCR, voice transcription, screen recording; iPhone companion app |
| Privacy | No account, no analytics; your data stays on the Mac | “Clipboard and file data entirely on your device” |
Who should pick which
Pick Droppy if
- Files are the main job: the shelf, the floating basket, zip, convert and share.
- You want the volume, brightness and backlight HUDs replaced.
- You want extensions like window snapping, OCR or voice transcription, or an iPhone companion app.
- You follow Cursor or Antigravity agents, which Droppy lists and Crowny does not.
- You want one licence for two Macs, or an Intel Mac.
Pick Crowny if
- You want to approve Claude Code’s permission prompts right in the notch. Droppy’s pages describe watching agents and their limits; they do not mention approvals.
- You run Grok sessions, or want a face for each session that shows what it is doing.
- Your next meeting with a Join button, focus sessions that hold nudges, weather and games.
Why people switch to Crowny
Droppy and Crowny both put coding agents and their plan limits in the notch, and both keep a shelf, clipboard history and music there. The difference is the centre of gravity. Droppy is a shelf and clipboard tool first, with agents as one of 38 extensions.
Crowny is built around the moment an agent needs you. Each Claude Code, Codex and Grok session has a face in the notch; when Claude Code asks to run a command, the question drops down with Approve and Deny, so you answer without finding the terminal. When a session finishes, you are told.
Around that, Crowny keeps the rest of a working day: the next meeting with Join, timers, alarms and focus sessions, water and stand nudges, weather, reminders and a few games.
Pricing
Droppy is $9.99 once on its site, for two Macs, with a 3-day trial and a 14-day refund. Crowny is $5 once for one Mac (list price $15), with every version 1 update and a 14-day refund.
Crowny’s licence and what it includes are on the pricing page. Already have it? Download Crowny.
Questions
Is Droppy open source?
Its code is on GitHub under GPL-3.0 with a Commons Clause, which makes it source-available rather than open source in the usual sense. The app itself is a paid licence.
Do both apps show Claude Code?
Yes. Droppy’s Agents extension follows Claude, Codex, Cursor and Antigravity and shows plan limits. Crowny shows Claude Code, Codex and Grok sessions and lets you approve Claude Code’s prompts from the notch.
Does Crowny have a clipboard manager like Droppy?
Crowny has clipboard history with a keyboard picker on Option-Shift-V. Droppy’s clipboard manager goes further, with tags, OCR and document previews.
Sources
Checked on 1 October 2026. Apps change; if something here is out of date, write to us and we will fix it.
NotchNook, Boring Notch, Alcove, DynamicLake, MediaMate, Atoll, Droppy, AgentNotch, TopNotch and the other names here belong to their owners. Crowny is not affiliated with any of them.