Take control
from the notch.

Productivity apps fail the same way: after a week you stop opening them. ctrlhq is never closed or buried behind windows. Your next task and the running timer sit in the notch, and everything else opens when you hover it, so using it becomes a habit.

ctrlhq notices when you step away. When you come back it asks whether to keep the idle time, remove it, or remove it and stop. You can also set it to stop the timer on its own after a set idle time.

No, on purpose. ctrlhq tracks the work you do on your laptop, on your laptop. There's no account, no sync and no dashboard to log into.

Tasks, time and settings live in one JSON file on your Mac. Export it as JSON or CSV whenever you like, for invoices, timesheets or your own spreadsheets. Screen recordings are saved to Movies › ctrlhq and meeting transcripts stay in ctrlhq's folder. ctrlhq never uploads any of it.

Yes. Speech is transcribed with Apple's on-device speech engine, and summaries use Apple Intelligence on your Mac, so audio and transcripts never leave it. ctrlhq only offers to take notes; it never starts on its own, and nothing is recorded until you say so. ctrlhq also hides itself from screen sharing, so nobody on the call sees your transcript.

Only the ones for features you use, and onboarding walks you through them: Calendar for today's events, Microphone and Camera for recordings and meeting notes, Screen Recording to capture your screen and the other side of a call, and Automation to control Music or Spotify. Skip any of them; you can turn them on later in Settings.

If Claude Code or the Codex CLI is installed, ctrlhq shows your plan limits: the 5-hour window, the weekly cap and when each resets. It reads the sign-in those tools already keep on your Mac (Claude Code's needs your OK in Keychain first) and asks Anthropic or OpenAI directly. Nothing goes through our servers, and ctrlhq never changes those sign-ins. If you switch between accounts, ctrlhq keeps each one's last limits on your Mac and can show a notch alert when a limit resets.

No. Instead, every purchase comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. Use ctrlhq for two weeks, and if it hasn't earned its place in your notch, email hello@ctrlhq.app for a full refund. No questions asked.

Yes. You pay $19 once and ctrlhq is yours. No subscription. Lifetime updates. $19 is the launch price; it goes up to $49 after launch, and buying now locks in every future update.

No. ctrlhq is a native Swift app, not a web page in a wrapper, and the download is about 12 MB. It's one app instead of the separate cleaner, clipboard manager, display tool, recorder and time tracker you'd otherwise keep running, and it has no background daemons or helper processes besides its updater.

ctrlhq checks for updates once a day and can install them quietly in the background. Every update is signed, and you can turn automatic installs off in Settings.

Yes. On an external display or an older Mac, ctrlhq draws its own notch at the top of your main screen. It hides while an app is fullscreen.

One Mac at a time. To move ctrlhq to a new Mac, deactivate it in Settings on the old one, then enter your key on the new one. Lost or wiped the old Mac? Email hello@ctrlhq.app and we'll move it for you. Reinstalling on the same Mac doesn't use a seat.

macOS 26 Tahoe or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.

If ctrlhq isn't for you, email hello@ctrlhq.app within 14 days for a full refund.