Changelog · August 12–13, 2026

v0.1.1

By Ayaan @ Noggin

This is the stretch from “give the notch a real stack of modules” on the evening of August 12 through the public-beta polish on August 13. Before that, Noggin was Canvas, music, timer, clocks, weather, and a blinking smile. After it, it’s a full companion: tiles you can add and remove, an arcade, Settings that actually control the island, a site, and a path to share a DMG.

v0.1.1 BETA. MacOS 14+, Apple Silicon. Menu bar, not the Dock.

Modules

The home island grew from a few tiles into a stack you can actually live in. Each one can be on or off. Empty space collapses, so a thin stack stays small.

• Music player — now playing, artwork, skip, play bar, visualizer. Spotify, Apple Music, and other media the system reports.
• Timer — any duration from the notch, plus 5 / 15 / 25 shortcuts.
• World clocks — three cities. Default labels Pacific, New York, London.
• Weather — local temp, high/low, sunrise when Location is on. No fake city if Location is off.
• Calendar — next event and reminder.
• System — CPU, memory, disk, uptime.
• Wi-Fi — network name, optional IP.
• Clipboard history — last few copies, tap to restore. Obvious secrets (tokens, mixed-case passwords) are skipped.
• Scratch pad — a tiny note that stays.
• Quick actions — screenshot, generated password, apps.
• Keep awake — stop the display from sleeping.
• Daily line — one line for the day.
• Bluetooth — AirPods and other connections. Connect pulse is a soft blue outline, not a full-island strobe.
• Eye strain — 20-20-20 breaks, optional closeness if Mirror is on.
• Mirror — front camera in the notch. Header icon and/or tile, independently.
• Find My — opens the Find My app. Header icon and/or tile, independently.
• Games — Noggin Run, Noggin Flap, Five Letter. On by default. Header icon and/or tile, independently.

Tap + on home. Tiles jiggle. Minus takes one off. The tray lists what’s left so you can put it back. Esc or the check finishes editing. The island height follows the stack.

Settings → Modules has extra switches per tile: play bar, visualizer, artwork, album, skip, show IP, high/low, sun times, reminders, CPU/memory/disk/uptime, timer presets, AM/PM, hide empty clipboard or Bluetooth, and the icon-vs-tile splits for Mirror, Find My, and Games.

Arcade

• Noggin Run — branded runner. Jump height and cactus spacing tuned so hops are possible; obstacles stay frequent but avoidable.
• Noggin Flap — branded flappy. More vertical room so spawn isn’t a wall hit. Hitting the floor is a death.
• Five Letter — five-letter word game, no daily limit. Named Five Letter (not Wordle). Gray / green / yellow marks stay those colors even with a custom accent. Larger dictionary. Adult answer words are filtered. Hub icon is a small scrambled NOG tile pile.

Games live behind the controller in the header, or the Games tile.

The island itself

• Idle is black. Hover peeks live activity. Click opens home. Double-click opens Canvas. Esc or click away closes.
• Smile and visualizer sit to the right of the camera, not on a separate lip. Playing music puts artwork on the left. The black shape continues across, including the left side.
• Hover-off collapses. The physical camera cutout counts as inside the island so the pointer doesn’t jitter there.
• Expand/close is a fluid frame animation, not a snap. Top of the shape stays flush with the bezel on notched MacOS (no gap during expand).
• Ambient: low power and Bluetooth can tint the outline. Timer running: yellow outline only, fill stays pitch black, analog ticking clock replaces the smile. No strobe on the timer.
• Volume and brightness bars can replace the MacOS overlay (Settings → Notch). Off by default. Needs Accessibility.
• Floating island — on MacOS without a camera notch, a fully rounded pill sits just below the top of the screen so wallpaper shows above it. Toggle in General and Notch. Ignored when this display already has a notch.

Settings → General: nudge collapsed X/Y, lip drop (how far it hangs below the camera), corner roundness, and expanded X/Y. Drop is hidden while floating island is the active shape.

Header chrome

• Canvas cap — opens Canvas. Follows custom accent if that’s on.
• Mirror, Find My, Games — each can be icon-only, tile-only, or both.
• Gear — opens Noggin Settings.
• Plus — edit modules.
• Clock and battery chips on the right. Weather chip when Location is on.
• Version and BETA at the bottom of expanded home.

Settings, permissions, privacy

• Settings is its own window (menu bar → Settings, or the gear). Tabs: General, Permissions, Modules, Notch, Clocks, Canvas.
• Launch at login. Show in screenshots and screen shares (off by default). Custom accent colors (off by default) recolors icons and themed bits.
• Notch tab: clock when idle, ambient smile, volume/brightness bars, expand on hover, eye strain, floating island.
• First-launch welcome: Allow recommended (Calendar, Location, Accessibility) or Continue / skip. Nothing is hard-required.
• Permissions tab: each permission is a switch. Accessibility is recommended, not required. “I already granted this” for Accessibility. Granted wants persist across launches. Modules that need a permission stay off until that permission is on.
• Location is When In Use. Camera is Mirror and optional closeness only.
• Canvas token lives in the Keychain on this MacOS, HTTPS only, sent only to the school URL you typed. Leftover plaintext files are migrated then deleted. No import from other project folders.
• Menu bar only (LSUIElement). Dock stays empty.
• Generated passwords use the system random generator. Clipboard skips secret-looking strings.

Canvas

• Double-click, or the cap. Overdue / due today / upcoming, points, quizzes, course name. Click a row to open it in the browser.
• Due dates use your MacOS’s time zone.
• Settings → Canvas walks through Account → Settings → New Access Token, then paste URL + token.

Share and install

• make run builds dist/Noggin.app, ad-hoc signs it, installs to Applications.
• make dmg writes a disk image. Packaging refuses a binary that still contains local home/project paths, and refuses a leaked .env.
• This beta is not notarized. Gatekeeper will warn. Control-click → Open, or System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. The install blog walks through it.
• Build is Apple Silicon. A universal Intel+arm64 pass is attempted; this machine falls back to arm64.

Site

• Marketing site in web/: hero, live island mock, Canvas pitch, school marquee (“For students at”), module previews you click to open, arcade, download.
• Interactive mock: pause, skip, copy, timer, zooms. Same icon sprite as the app. Settings gear is a clean cog, not a sketch.
• Night mountains wallpaper in the desktop mock (replacing Apple Tahoe Day).
• Blog: Canvas how-to, non-notarized DMG how-to (with a walkthrough), add/remove modules (with a walkthrough), this changelog.
• Privacy, terms, LICENSE. Footers: Privacy, Terms, Dynamic Island trademark line. 404 uses root paths. Icon sprites work from /blog/.
• Copy matches the app: Apple Silicon, Keychain, Five Letter, menu bar not Dock. Download note if the DMG isn’t next to the page yet.

Fixes along the way

• Crash on open; hover jitter on the physical notch; off-center expand; smile hidden behind the camera.
• Play/pause and skip for Music/Spotify; play bar accuracy; media from more sources, including browser video when the system reports it.
• Mirror permission and missing header icon. Module tiles with uneven spacing.
• Volume ducking from an aggressive HUD suppressor. The 50ms kill loop is gone. Optional HUD still hides the system overlay when you use it.
• Permission toggles reverting every launch; Keychain prompts on every launch (now first setup / when you save a token).
• Timer fill strobe removed; outline-only yellow while a timer runs.

Still yours to finish

Developer ID + notarize. Point DNS at the host and put Noggin.dmg on nogginusa.com (temporary until noggin.bar). Support email once a mailbox exists. Intel if you want a universal build on a machine that can lipo both archs.

The island is still a beta. If something in this list doesn’t match what you see, quit Noggin from Settings and open the latest Noggin.app from Applications.