Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this “NotchNook” thing on my phone, you know, the app that puts a fake notch on your screen? Sounds dumb, I know, but it’s kinda fun to play with. Anyway, I got bored with it and wanted to try something different, so I started digging around for alternatives.
First Attempts
My first thought was, “There’s gotta be a ton of these things.” So I just went straight to the app store and searched for stuff like “notch simulator” and “display cutout.” I found a few, but honestly, most of them were pretty janky. Like, they were either super buggy, had way too many ads, or just looked… ugly.
I tried a couple, I won’t name names, but let’s just say they didn’t last long on my phone. One of them kept crashing every time I tried to change the notch style, and another one had so many pop-up ads it was basically unusable. Total waste of time.
Digging Deeper
So, app store was a bust, mostly. Time to hit the forums! I figured there had to be some other nerds like me who’d already figured this out. I spent a good hour or two browsing through some Android forums and, subreddits about phone customization, and stuff like that.
I found some recommendations, some were good and some other were not good.
What Finally Worked (Sort Of)
I’ve learned a lesson about the default app market, so I try to find some apk outside of that.
I found some of them, and it worked, they has many shape of notch, and style. I can even make it looks like dynamic island on my phone.
It’s not perfect, it has bugs sometimes, but at least it’s not crashing every five seconds, and it’s not trying to sell me something every time I open the app.
My main takeaway from this whole experience? Sometimes you gotta go off the beaten path to find what you’re looking for. The app store is great for some things, but for niche stuff like this, you might have to get your hands a little dirty and do some digging. And be prepared to try a few duds before you find something that actually works!