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Whisper Island has two overlay modes. Both keep the window always on top and click-through outside the visible shape, so they never get in the way.

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Pill

A floating overlay near the top of the screen, centered horizontally. Works on every Mac.
  • Compact when idle
  • Animates when you’re recording
  • Can be hidden with Cmd+Shift+H and re-shown with the same shortcut
  • Survives Spaces and full-screen apps — it stays put on the current desktop
The pill is the default mode. Pick this if you don’t have a notch, or if you prefer a clearly visible indicator.

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Notch

The overlay tucks into the macOS notch area on MacBooks that have one. Visually, the pill sits inside the black notch space.
  • Invisible when you don’t need it
  • Uses a private window level so it sits above the menu bar without stealing focus
  • The visible shape is the only interactive area — the cursor passes through the rest of the window
The notch mode uses nswindow-napi and a few macOS workarounds (SetFrameOrigin, DisableFrameConstraint) to keep the window sitting at the top of the screen even after constrainFrameRect. If those fail to load (rare), Whisper Island falls back to a high screen-saver window level — the overlay still works, it just sits slightly below the notch.

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Switching modes

Change modes in Settings → Display. The old overlay is destroyed and a fresh one is created — no need to restart the app.

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Visibility shortcuts

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Why two modes?

The pill is for visibility — you always know where it is. The notch mode is for absence — the overlay only appears when you speak. Pick whichever matches the way you want to feel the app in your day.