Downterm

A drop-down terminal for macOS that lives in the notch area.

Downterm is a notch-native terminal overlay for macOS. It gives you a fast shell without switching spaces, keeping a full Terminal window open, or breaking your flow. Open it with a hotkey, drop into a shell, then get out of the way just as quickly.

The current Xcode target and bundle name are still CommandNotch, but the project is being presented publicly as Downterm.

Why Downterm

• You want a terminal that is always one shortcut away.
• You like the idea of a terminal living in the menu bar / notch area instead of a full window.
• You work across multiple displays and want each screen to keep its own notch state.
• You want lightweight workspaces, detachable tabs, and shell access without giving up native macOS feel.

Features

• Native macOS notch overlay with open and closed states.
• Fast shell sessions powered by SwiftTerm and a local login shell.
• Multiple tabs with hotkeys for new, close, next, previous, and direct tab switching.
• Workspace support, including shared workspaces across screens.
• Multi-display awareness with per-screen assignment and presentation state.
• Detachable tabs that can pop out into standalone terminal windows.
• Terminal themes: Classic, Xterm, Solarized Dark, Dracula, and Nord.
• Configurable terminal size presets with optional hotkeys.
• Hover-to-open behavior and animation tuning.
• Launch at login support.
• Global toggle hotkey and notch-scoped shortcut handling.
• Terminal-friendly macOS key behavior for Command+Arrow, Option+Arrow, Command+Backspace, and Command+L.

Gallery

Open Notch Terminal

Settings

Getting Started

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• Xcode 16 or later
• Homebrew xcodegen

Build

cd Downterm
xcodegen generate --spec project.yml
open CommandNotch.xcodeproj

Or from the command line:

cd Downterm
xcodegen generate --spec project.yml
DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer \
  xcodebuild build -project CommandNotch.xcodeproj -scheme CommandNotch -destination 'platform=macOS'

Project Layout

Downterm/
├── Downterm/                # XcodeGen spec, app target, tests
├── docs/                    # architecture and planning notes
├── icons/                   # app icons and branding assets
└── .github/assets/          # README screenshots and support assets

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. If you want to fix bugs, improve the UX, tighten the architecture, or help polish the public release, start with CONTRIBUTING.md.

Help Fund Development

If Downterm saves you time, support helps justify more polish and faster iteration.

• Ko-fi: ADD_YOUR_KOFI_LINK_HERE
• BCH: ADD_YOUR_BCH_ADDRESS_HERE

Funding placeholders are intentionally left unfinalized until the maintainer adds the real Ko-fi URL and BCH address. Replace the BCH placeholder above and swap in a real QR image before publishing this section widely.

License

Downterm is released under the MIT License.