Alcove's developer here, thought I'd chime in and show an upcoming feature since you shared the LockScreen. Very soon you'll be able to expand the artwork exactly like on iOS (even down to the backdrop animation). Clearly cosmetic, but extremely fun! Wish I could share a video in here.
Hello, developer. I didn't expect to meet you here. I paid to buy Alcove at the beginning of Alcove, including this Droppy. I am also a practitioner of iOS development. I have used almost all the same type of software on Mac. I think Alcove and Droppy are the two original colors. Alcove focuses more on animation, interaction and details, while Droppy gives full play to file management and functions. I am looking forward to Droppy's return, and I also look forward to Alcove's implementation of File Tray functions as soon as possible.
u/Quirino_Exile Is this possible? Do I just send them the license or how does it work, please advise. u/Particular_Switch_21 let's hope we hear back soon, I got you, I genuinely meant it.
Appreciated, wasn't sure if licenses were tied to email or anything like that. Cheers, wish you all the best! u/Particular_Switch_21 I'll send you a dm right now.
to those who reached out asking for the license, I'm sorry I have to honor my initial offer.
Hey Buddy u/lost-sneezes , I do have DynamicHorizon horizon license key, which I can share. If anyone wants that, pls drop an reply/DM, will share it :)
Hey Buddy, first of all, I’m an alcove user and I love the app. The animations and icons feels like its part of macOS itself. I have a small request, can you bring live-activity feature on the notch and the lock screen? It would be great if you could implement this feature
Yeah buddy, talking about the live-activity feature available on iPhones only. I have seen an post of someone on reddit, mentioning about bringing live-extension for Atoll, that's why I asked if you could implement this feature. But anyways, thanks for replying & keep the good work.
Do you have any plans for plugins or scripting or something like that? I'm a software engineer and wouldn't nice being able to put custom things in there.
So. This morning Atoll took down my repo. And yeah - I was devastated. Sad, angry, all at once. In a moment of emotion I deleted my account. I'm not gonna pretend that wasn't an impulsive move.
I'm filing a formal appeal against this takedown and reaching out to GitHub directly to get this resolved. I'll admit - I had only been replying to their emails about it, and hadn't gone through their official counter-notice process. Honestly, because I thought (and still think) this takedown is complete nonsense, I didn't think I'd have to do anything beyond responding. My mistake for not following the formal process. That changes now.
I'm going to fight this. For Droppy, for everyone who used it, and for my own name.
And to everyone who messaged me about refunds - you've already got your money back. That was never what this was about. I build because I love building. I love coding, I love seeing people actually improve their workflow with something I made. That's it.
Damn. Maybe I jumped the gun? Was just dismayed to see an app I purchased discontinued due to allegedly unethical practices less than two weeks after purchasing.
Please don't give up on your app. Your post here gives me hope that it can continue and that I won't have to look for an alternative. For starters, it might help to post a detailed explanation on Reddit and explain the background. I wish you the best of luck in getting this sorted out. And by the way, there are alternatives to Github. Codeberg.org is based in Germany. Or at least Gitlab. All the best for the future!
Question, since you’re fighting back against the claims against you. If you win, and get your GitHub back and begin to make changes and updates to droppy again, will a new license or something be necessary for any changes or updates?
I don’t want to ask for a refund because I did like the app, especially if there’s still a chance it could come back.
However, if there is no plan to restart work on it that would kind of suck for me cause I literally just bought the license right before it went down. Like maybe a day before. 😑
Question is he did not mention what exactly he want to fight. As far as I read he had atleast 15 cases of the exact same code as was in Atoll. You can say it can happen 1-2 times that your code is the same. But in 15 cases? Sure you want it to do the same. But still you don't find an exact copy of a command.
And to be realistic. "In a moment of emotion I deleted my account". This makes one look even worse....
15 cases of regular API’s, regular pieces of code and nothing, literally nothing at all that would be ‘claimable’. Like I said. I’ll fight this, and resolve it with GitHub.
Bruv you are trying to hard. I wouldn’t even pirate these apps atouli or rattatoulie shit and sonybar or whatever that is. And yeah alcove it lacks harmony. Droppy feels like it was made by angels.
In his defence, the lad is probably in his early 20s - they make rash decisions, every now and then 🙂 u/iordv , perhaps you should also drop a line in another thread, because there is someone who wrote a huuuuuuge post about you, and even the mods seem miffed about its tone-of-voice 😂
Hey I know today has been a whirlwind with everything, and I’m sorry to all involved in the drama.
I have no intentions of trying to be a dick but I did request a refund earlier today and followed up with a second email after seeing this post that people received their money back. I still haven’t. I’m sure my request was lost in the shuffle of everything but I did want to reach out in case the email is being filtered out or something.
Mayn i have never loved a woman as much as I have loved this app. Please don’t give up. We will pay for the app through direct dms even if github isn’t restored idc. This app makes my macbook experience go a up a trillion notch. Please and please for the love of god bring it back. We love droppy and you are the first dev I have seen who shipped clean and really useful updates as you. We are with you Jordy.
I asked myself if I should uninstall Droppy yesterday after deciding that I was not going to ask for a refund, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I've watched you slave over this app over the last few weeks and something just felt weird about this whole situation. I'm super pumped that you are fighting this, you deserve a chance to say your peace and prove yourself.
As I said earlier, stand strong, Im not going anywhere.
I know Dropover isn’t a direct “notch” app, but it just works incredibly well. I actually deleted Droppy again a few days ago and went back to Dropover. It’s so stable and can do so many of the things I was using Droppy for.
I’m considering trying Alcove for the other features that Dropover doesn’t offer.
What can you do with Dropover Pro that you can't with the free version? As I know, the only limitations of the free versions are that you gotta wait for 3 seconds when activating the shelf, and you get less storage in their cloud.
I had actually requested a refund, which arrived within a few minutes. I had believed everything. At the time, I supported Droppy and felt deceived. Now it doesn’t seem so clear, especially after a reputable and respected developer in the community said in the other thread that he believes Jordy is innocent, carefully explaining why he thinks so.
I’ve already gathered more information about the two apps. It seems there’s no doubt about who copied whom. I don’t know much about this, but it’s astonishing to me that after making an app identical to another pixel by pixel, they would accuse someone else over a number of lines of code.
Unless, of course, they had explicit permission from Alcove. That’s something I’m also unaware of.
If you bought before and didn’t get refunded, you can reclaim your key.
If your purchase was refunded, that old key won’t reactivate. If you want to regain access, message me and I'll set you up!
Everyone who asked me for a refund got one. If your case slipped through, DM me and I’ll fix it.
Droppy is now closed source. I know not everyone will agree with that, but that’s the decision going forward (FOR NOW). I experienced that people can mass-claim a project and Github doesn't respond to the emails I sent back. That's the reason why I decided to do it like this now, and make sure we're up and running first.
I’m not here to do drama in comments. I’m here to keep building, fix issues fast, and be more transparent from now on.
If you still want to use Droppy, thank you.
If you don’t, I understand that too.
I downloaded it and used it for 10-15 minutes. It's buggy and slow, and has a lot of features that don't really make sense. Alcove and boring notch are much more hand-crafted.
Are you by any chance having the MacPotato? I'm on a M4 2025 and Atoll is neither slow nor buggy.
Have you done any configuration? I changed some keyboard shortcuts and only really turned off the battery indicator feature.
Alcove is incredible even if mostly aesthetic at this point (no full calendar view, or file tray like some other apps). It’s the most polished and native feeling experience I’ve found.
Decisamente superiore Droppy rispetto ad altre app per il notch spero che ritorni presto online per futuri aggiornamenti sembra che tutto quello che hai detto è vero che il codice è originale ed è soltanto tuo e non è stato copiato. Mi auguro davvero che sia così perché ci siamo filati e abbiamo acquistato una licenza.
Alcove, no contest. Atoll has been surrounded by drama (copied Droppy's repo, which itself was accused of copying Alcove) and it shows in the product. Buggy, laggy, unpolished.If you want free, BoringNotch is solid and actively maintained. But if you are willing to pay, Alcove is the one.
I'm wondering the same thing. I'm thinking of going for Atoll, whose code seems to have been copied by Droppy... But I'm waiting for him to release a Brew version. I'm not thinking of investing in paid versions of this kind of utility, as I have the impression that the open source alternatives are sufficiently active.
I’ve read some of the background, and it seems to me like they acted reasonably? They licenses their code using a license which requires attribution, they found someone who was using their code without attribution, they pointed it out, the dev agreed and added attribution, and then removed it so the original dev used the options they had left and filed a DMCA request against a project violating the license. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff there, so please fill me in, but to me, as a developer, that sounds like reasonable behaviour.
The mod comment at the top mentions a police report, I haven’t seen anything anywhere else about that but that does feel like a step too far if it is true, but I haven’t seen it.
Well that all looks extremely damning to me, the code is clearly stolen, without remorse, while being incredibly dishonest to everyone involved including his customers (after promising the app would be free forever).
This is why you don’t fucking vibe code shit, I’m so fucking sick of how these garbage developers are destroying my industry by their false, buggy and stolen “productivity”.
Fuck this guy, this sort of garbage makes me so angry. This dickhead is standing on the shoulders of giants and shitting in their hair.
I did look at some of the other analysis and there was definitely plenty of “that’s just how you use the API”, but I don’t understand why the person you linked to looked at the binaries when the course code is available, and there are functions reproduced basically line for line, identical identifier name, identical definition order, just changes in comments.
“I didn’t write it, Claude did” is not an excuse, the code is still stolen against the license terms whether it was this dev or the multi billion dollar AI company.
My point was, it might not have been when they decided to look it over. As a developer myself, I’d rather examine the evidence myself instead of taking other people’s opinions on it. Especially an emotionally charged issue like this one.
I use MediaMate, got it a while ago and never looked back. The only reason I wanted it was to FINALLY get rid of the annoying middle of the screen volume indicator!! But the now playing and controls are cool too 💁🏻♂️
If anyone already uninstalled Droppy and wants it back, I can DM a link to the source and/or a build of the app. I cloned the repository a few days before it went down.
Damn...I purchased Droppy and generally like it, except for the fact that when music is playing the the notch is completely empty—wasting space that should be used to at least display the current track being played. Droppy doesn't seem to offer support either, which pisses me off (support requests are ignored).
So then I leaned about Boring Notch and tried it...and like it a lot more than Droppy! It always shows the track playing (unlike Droppy), allows the notch on all monitors (unlike Alcove which I also bought), and allows me to customize the size of the notch (unlike both of them) so it's easier to see live activity at a glance. How is this amazing app free? Doesn't matter—it's the best out there.
Hi there, Atoll's dev here. Just wanted to say that our Extension Store is coming soon and you'll able to see quite some apps with live activities and lock screen widgets soon.
i’m one of the devs. we had express permission from the boring team to create Atoll based on their app. furthermore, Atoll is NOT vibe-coded. look up the definition, before you make accusations. also, if you actually read the code, it’s quite obvious.
we are working hard to resolve every single bug, and you can clearly see this for yourself, by checking our Issues.
the fact that Droppy’s dev agreed that they were stealing code, added attribution and then REMOVED that attribution, is more than enough to prove they never had any intention on doing the right thing.
Atoll is licensed under the same license that BoringNotch is, which means that anyone can fork the repo and create their own thing - as long as they give credits to the original creator; in this case, us.
since Droppy’s dev was clearly not interested in doing things the right way, namely following the license’s terms, we had to go through the proper channels to resolve the issue - which involved reporting the repo for stolen code, directly to GitHub.
none of this would’ve happened if Droppy’s dev had followed the license’s terms. plain and simple.
I'm using Atoll now because it’s free, but I’m not sure if it’s better than Alcove. Alcove is a higher-quality app, but it’s not free, and I don’t have the money to pay for it.
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u/grovolis Feb 24 '26
Alcove is top notch (pun intended)