NotchApps

A Dynamic Island–style notch for Windows laptops — battery, temperatures, power modes and game FPS at the top of your screen.

Download · Features · Which app? · FAQ · Build

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NotchApps is two small, single-file Windows apps that share the same notch UI:

• NotchPilot — for HP Omen laptops: power modes plus BIOS fan control and a game mode.
• PowerNotch — for any Windows 10/11 laptop: power modes with per-mode tuning, no fan control.

Both are written in plain C# on .NET Framework 4 (ships with Windows), have no installer dependencies, and need no background services besides the app itself.

✨ Features

The notch

• 🔋 Always-visible status — battery %, time remaining and CPU temperature in a pill at the top center of the screen.
• 🖱️ Hover to peek, click to act — hover to see the active power mode, click to drop down the power mode buttons.
• 🎮 Live game FPS — counts DirectX 11/12 frames of the foreground game via Windows ETW (the same technique PresentMon uses), no overlay injection.
• 🌡️ GPU temperature — read directly from the NVIDIA driver (nvml.dll), no nvidia-smi process spawning.
• 🐱 Optional pet — a tiny hand-drawn cat, dog, chick, rabbit or bird that lives in the notch and jumps when you click it.
• ↔️ Draggable — slide the notch horizontally; one button re-centers it.
• 🪄 macOS-style animations — windows fly out of the notch and return with a genie effect, spring bounces, 60 fps frame pacing.

Power management

Mode	What it does
🍃 Maximum Saver	Most aggressive battery settings, caps CPU and brightness on battery, turns the screen off after 3 min on battery, can drop the display to 60 Hz and disable the discrete NVIDIA GPU when the display runs on the iGPU.
🔋 Battery Saver	Configurable CPU cap and brightness on battery.
⚖️ Normal	Balanced plan, CPU limits reset, never sleeps.
⚡ Performance	High performance plan.

• Uses copies of Windows' built-in plans via powercfg — your own plans are never modified.
• Command line: NotchPilot.exe pil | maks | normal | performans (same for PowerNotch.exe) applies a mode without opening the UI.

Fan control (NotchPilot only)

• 🌀 Four presets — Quiet (0 RPM), Medium (1400), Game (2800), Max (5200) — plus Auto (BIOS).
• 🛡️ Safety cut-off — if the temperature exceeds the safety limit (default 85 °C), fans go back to BIOS auto.
• ♻️ Fans are always handed back to BIOS auto mode on exit or when game mode is turned off.
• Talks to the HP BIOS through its WMI interface (hpqBIntM), the same protocol OmenFanControl uses.

Quality of life

• 🌍 6 UI languages — Türkçe, English, Español, Deutsch, Français, 中文 (follows Windows by default).
• 🔐 Admin mode without UAC nags — a one-time scheduled task lets the app start elevated (needed for FPS and fan control). The install folder is locked to administrators so the task cannot be abused.
• 🚀 Start with Windows, dark theme everywhere, tray icon, single-instance guard.
• 📦 One-file installer with a proper uninstaller entry in Settings → Apps.

🤔 Which app should I use?

	NotchPilot	PowerNotch
Target hardware	HP Omen	Any Windows 10/11 laptop
Notch, battery, CPU temp	✅	✅
Power modes	✅	✅
Per-mode CPU / brightness / screen-off tuning	Battery & Max Saver	✅ All modes
Game FPS in notch	✅	✅
GPU temperature	✅	✅
BIOS fan control & game mode	✅	❌

Important

Install only one of them. Both manage power plans and draw a notch in the same place.

📥 Installation

1. Download NotchPilot-Setup.exe or PowerNotch-Setup.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it and choose an install folder (default: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\<App>).
3. Keep "Install admin mode" checked — Windows asks for approval once; afterwards the app starts elevated without UAC prompts.
4. Shortcuts are created in the Start menu and Startup folder (desktop shortcut optional).

Note

The installers are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you. Click More info → Run anyway. You can verify the download with the SHA-256 hashes in the release notes, or build it yourself.

The installer opens in your Windows display language; the apps follow it too, or the language you pick in Settings.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (x64), .NET Framework 4 (preinstalled on Windows). Do not run from a USB stick — the admin task and startup shortcut store the install path.

❓ FAQ

Why does it need administrator rights?

Only for the features that require it: real-time ETW sessions (game FPS), reading CPU package temperature through the PawnIO driver, and HP BIOS fan commands. Without admin mode the app still runs; those features fall back or show --.

Is fan control safe?

NotchPilot only writes to the BIOS when you pick a speed, re-applies it periodically, and returns control to the BIOS on exit, when game mode is turned off, or when the safety temperature is exceeded. It is still beta: it has not been verified on every Omen model. Start with a low speed, and don't run it alongside OmenFanControl or another fan tool. Quiet (0 RPM) can cause heating under load.

The FPS counter shows nothing.

FPS needs admin mode and a DirectX 11/12 game in the foreground. OpenGL and Vulkan titles that don't present through DXGI are not counted.

CPU temperature shows --.

The app first reads the CPU sensor through LibreHardwareMonitor + PawnIO (installed by the setup), then falls back to the Windows ACPI thermal zones. Some laptops expose neither without admin rights.

What is PawnIO?

A signed, open-source kernel driver by namazso used by LibreHardwareMonitor to read CPU sensors. The installer sets it up silently if it is not already present.

How do I uninstall?

Settings → Apps → NotchPilot/PowerNotch → Uninstall. This removes the program folder, shortcuts, admin task and settings. Manual steps are in each app's README.

🛠️ Building from source

No Visual Studio or NuGet needed — the C# compiler that ships with Windows (csc.exe) is enough.

1. Download PawnIO_setup.exe from the PawnIO.Setup releases and place it in lib/.
2. Build:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File NotchPilot\build\build.ps1
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File PowerNotch\build\build.ps1

Installers land in NotchPilot\dist\ and PowerNotch\dist\.

📁 Repository layout

lib/                 shared third-party libraries (embedded into the exe)
NotchPilot/
  src/               NotchPilot.cs (app), Setup.cs (installer), Loc.cs (translations)
  assets/            icon
  build/build.ps1    build script
PowerNotch/          same layout

🤝 Contributing

Bug reports, translations and hardware test results (especially from other HP Omen models) are very welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

🙏 Acknowledgements

• LibreHardwareMonitor — CPU sensor access
• PawnIO by namazso — kernel driver for sensor reads
• PresentMon — the ETW frame-counting approach
• OmenFanControl — reference for the HP BIOS WMI fan protocol

📄 License

MIT © klashain. Third-party components in lib/ keep their own licenses — see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

Disclaimer: This project is not affiliated with HP Inc. "HP" and "OMEN" are trademarks of HP Inc. Fan control writes to your laptop's BIOS — use it at your own risk.