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Proximate watches the apps you select and mirrors their notification icons beside your cursor. When a monitored app has an unread notification — an unread message, a missed call, a build failure — its icon appears next to your cursor so you see it immediately without breaking focus.
You’re always in control. Proximate only monitors the apps you explicitly add to your watch list — nothing is tracked without your permission. If an app becomes too noisy, remove it from the list at any time.

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How It Works

  • macOS: Proximate reads notification data via the macOS Accessibility API. It detects when a monitored app displays an unread notification and shows that app’s icon near your cursor.
  • Windows: Proximate monitors your pinned and running taskbar applications for notification changes.
When the notification is cleared in the source app, the icon disappears from your cursor automatically.

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Notification Count

Some apps show a count of unread notifications (e.g., “3 unread messages”). Proximate can display this count as a small badge — a dot with white digits — overlaid on the app’s icon near your cursor. You can choose to show or hide these count badges in your settings.

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Wipe Icons

If you’ve seen the notifications and want to clear the icons from your cursor without opening each app, use Wipe App Icons. This removes all currently displayed notification icons at once. You can trigger it from the tray menu or with the keyboard shortcut (default: Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+W). Wiped icons will reappear if the source app sends a new notification.

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Adding and Removing Apps

See Selecting Apps for step-by-step instructions on managing your watch list.

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Advanced Integrations

For tools that don’t have a native app icon — CLI utilities, build scripts, AI agents — you can push custom alerts to your cursor using Advanced Integrations.