Download attn LED for macOS

One small green light, a handful of apps you actually need to hear from, and zero on-screen pop-ups. That is the promise attn LED 1.0 ships with.

What the LED watches for

• Messages from Slack, Mail, Messages, Discord, Teams and Telegram
• New notifications from apps you add later — the app spots them on its own
• Any alert that matters while macOS Focus or Do Not Disturb is on

How it stays out of your way

The blinking stops the moment you open the app that triggered it. During FaceTime calls and video conferences, attn LED goes quiet on its own — no manual toggling needed. Under the hood, it reads the macOS notifications database through FSEvents so Focus Mode limitations do not block the light. Set it, forget it, and let the hardware handle the interruption while you stay in deep work.

Letting attn LED learn your notification sources

Give it half a day to learn your rhythm. Open System Settings → Notifications and check which apps are set to deliver alerts. attn LED 1.0 picks up new notification sources automatically, so the list of watched apps grows as your workday unfolds. If the LED blinks too often, head into the app and trim the list to just the tools you cannot afford to miss — Slack and Messages tend to be enough for most people.

Place your MacBook so the camera light sits in your peripheral view but not dead centre. Off to one side works best: you catch the blink without staring at it. If you work across multiple rooms, the LED is bright enough to spot from a doorway, so you can step away from the desk and still know when something needs attention.

A morning deep-work session, step by step

Picture a two-hour writing block with notifications silenced. Here is how attn LED fits in.

1. Turn on a custom Focus Mode that blocks banners and sounds.
2. Open attn LED and confirm Slack and Mail are the only watched apps.
3. Start your session. The screen stays clean.
4. Forty minutes in, the green LED pulses. You glance over, finish your sentence, then open Slack.
5. The blinking stops. You reply, close Slack, and return to writing.

No dock badges, no slide-in previews, just a physical cue that waited until you were ready. The whole loop — notice, respond, reset — takes under a minute.

When the light misbehaves

A few snags pop up, and most are quick to fix.

• LED not blinking at all. Check that attn LED has permission to monitor notifications. On first launch, macOS prompts for accessibility access — if you skipped it, re-enable it under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
• Blinking during a video call. The app pauses automatically for FaceTime, Zoom and others, but if you use a lesser-known conferencing tool, quit attn LED before the call. The developer is expanding the auto-pause list in future builds.
• Too many apps triggering the light. Open the app and deselect anything non-urgent. The auto-detection feature is handy, but an overstuffed list turns the LED into noise.
• LED keeps blinking after you read the message. attn LED waits for you to open the app that sent the alert. If you read a Slack DM on your phone, the Mac still sees the notification as unread. Open the Mac app briefly and the light resets.

If you have cycled through these and the LED still acts up, a quick reinstall sorts most quirks. Drag the app from Applications to Trash, restart your Mac, and reinstall from the disk image. Your app list and settings are preserved in a small preference file, so you will not lose your configuration.

• macOS 12 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac with a camera indicator LED