Dynamic Island on MacBook Air: M2, M3, M4 and M5

No MacBook Air has Apple's Dynamic Island, and that includes the M4 and M5 models. Every Air from the M2 on has a notch, the black cutout at the top middle of the screen that holds the camera. The M1 Air and the Intel Airs have neither a notch nor an island. On the Mac, Apple's island comes only with the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, announced on 28 October 2026.

No software update will change that. The island is tied to that MacBook Pro's new display, and Apple hasn't said anything about bringing it to the Air. What an M2 or later Air does have is a notch you can put to work, and this post covers how.

Which MacBook Air do you have?

Apple's own list of MacBook Air models runs from 2020 to 2026. Here is what each generation has at the top of the screen.

If you are not sure which one you own, open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. The chip is listed there, and the screen size is on the box or on Apple's support page for your model. The M1 Air has its own post, Dynamic Island on an M1 MacBook Air, because with no notch its situation is quite different.

What the notch on an Air is, and is not

The Air's notch is a cutout, not a screen. macOS treats it as a gap in the menu bar: your app menus run along the left of it and your status icons along the right, and nothing is drawn inside. In full screen the strip beside the notch turns black and the notch blends into it. It holds the camera and its green light. There is no Face ID on any Mac, so there is none here either, and Touch ID is on the keyboard.

That is the difference from the Dynamic Island on the iPhone and on the new MacBook Pro. Apple's island is a place the system draws into: Spotlight, Siri AI, calls, music, AirDrop and Live Activities. On the Air, the notch is just empty space. If you want it to do something, an app has to do it.

What you can do on an Air today

Show iPhone Live Activities in the menu bar

On an Air running macOS Tahoe, Live Activities from your iPhone, such as a timer, a delivery or a score, can sit in the menu bar once the two are linked through iPhone Mirroring. Any Air with Apple silicon meets Apple's chip requirement for that, and the iPhone needs iOS 18 or later. It shows up as a menu bar item, not an island, and it doesn't grow around the notch. How Tahoe's Live Activities are set up covers the rest of the setup.

Put the notch to work with an app

An app can draw inside the notch area, because macOS lets any app draw at the top of the screen. The kinds you will find are a media island that shows what is playing, a file shelf that holds a dragged file for a moment, a calendar or timer view, and a reminders companion. They are limited to what macOS shows every app, so they won't be wired into Spotlight or incoming calls the way Apple's island is. Ways to make the MacBook notch useful goes through the kinds, and the one that suits you depends on what you look at all day.

Leave it alone

This is a perfectly good choice. A notch takes very little from you: the menu bar sits to either side, and when too many icons pile up, macOS hides the ones that would run into the notch. Menu bar icons hidden behind the notch has the fix if that happens to you.

Is it worth buying a new Mac for the island?

For an Air owner, not on the island's account. The Mac that has it is a MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen and M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. Those are the reasons to buy it, if any of them matter to you, and the island is one feature of the package.

The usual Air questions still decide it: what you carry, how long you work away from a charger, and how much power your work needs. The cutout at the top of the screen is the least of the differences between the two.

If you use the Air with an external display

Many Air owners close the lid at a desk and work on a bigger screen. Then the notch is out of the picture: the lid is shut, and no external display has a notch, Apple's included. Anything that wants to show something at the top of the screen has to draw it on the main display. That is also why Apple's island is not something you could borrow this way: it belongs to the built-in screen of one laptop.

With the lid open beside the display, the notch is still on the Air's own screen, so it only helps if the laptop sits where you glance at it. A stand that lifts the Air to roughly the height of the monitor keeps it in view and is easier on your neck as well.

Notchpals on an Air

On an M2 or later Air, Notchpals moves into the notch you already have and uses it for one thing: now and then a character drops out to look after you, then tucks back in. On a laptop that travels from desk to sofa to kitchen table, water is an easy one to forget. Puddle, the seal pup in the Water area, puts it like this:

PuddleWater break! I'll balance the glass on my nose. You just drink it.

At a desk, the characters stay in the notch while the lid is open, even if the monitor is your main display. Close the lid and they move to a black island drawn at the top of the monitor. Either way, none of them interrupts a call.