Does Boring Notch Drain Your Battery? How to Check (2026)

You installed Boring Notch, and now your MacBook seems to run out of charge sooner. Is the notch app doing that?

Short answer: it can, but not always, and it depends on what you have switched on. User reports point at the audio visualizer that runs while music plays. Turn that off first. Then measure on your own Mac, because a number from someone else’s laptop tells you little about yours.

Seam in island mode on a Mac without a notch, showing the compact now playing pill

Why a Notch App Uses Power at All

A notch app is always running, and some parts of it do real work while it runs.

The visualizer. Pulsing bars that follow your music mean the app is reading audio data and redrawing the screen many times a second. Anything that animates constantly keeps the CPU and GPU awake.
Polling. An app that checks every second whether something changed uses more than one that waits to be told.
Camera mirror. Showing a live camera preview in the notch is heavy by nature, so leave it off unless you want it.

Boring Notch has a lot of features, and the ones that move are the ones that cost.

How to Check It on Your Own Mac

Ten minutes, and you get a real answer.

Open Activity Monitor and click the Energy tab.
Look for Boring Notch in the list. Note its Energy Impact while it’s idle.
Play music with the visualizer on. Watch the number for a couple of minutes.
Turn the visualizer off in Boring Notch settings, play the same music, and watch again.
For the long view, check System Settings, then Battery for the usage history. The tab lists which apps used energy over the last day.

If the number barely moves, the app isn’t your problem. If it jumps when the visualizer runs, you’ve found the cost.

What to Switch Off

In order of what usually helps most:

The audio visualizer. The biggest one, based on what users report.
Camera mirror. Off unless you use it.
Features you don’t use. Each live widget is a little more work.
Update to the latest release. Fixes for crashes and leaks land between versions, so an old build can behave worse than a new one.

If you’ve done all that and battery is still your complaint, the app may not suit a laptop you run unplugged all day. Nobody’s at fault. It’s a free app run by volunteers, and polish on power use comes slowly.

The Other Way to Build a Notch App

Seam is ours, so weigh this accordingly. We built it event-driven: it wakes when something changes, such as a track, a calendar event or a battery level, and sits idle the rest of the time. It has no always-on visualizer to switch off. We haven’t published a battery number here, because the honest test is the one above, on your Mac. Run the same Activity Monitor check on Seam’s 48-hour trial, which needs no credit card.

It costs $29 once. If you only want music in the notch and the free app treats your battery well after the changes above, keep Boring Notch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Boring Notch drain battery?

It can, mostly when the audio visualizer is on during playback. Measure with Activity Monitor’s Energy tab.

How do I reduce Boring Notch’s battery use?

Turn off the audio visualizer and the camera mirror, switch off widgets you don’t use, and update to the latest release.

Is Boring Notch heavy on CPU?

Users report it mostly when something animates, like the visualizer. We haven’t measured idle load, so check your own Mac.

An app that reacts to changes costs very little. An app that animates or polls constantly costs more. It depends on the app and what’s on.

Which notch app is lightest on battery?

Test two on your own Mac with Activity Monitor. Seam is built to stay idle until something changes, and its trial is free for 48 hours.