The notch is dead! MacBook Pro with OLED may ditch it once and for all

MacBook Pro 14-inch (2024, M4) shown open on a table — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

I love MacBooks. Apple’s notebooks are easily some of the best laptops you can buy right now. But that doesn’t mean they’re perfect, and my biggest bugbear is that damn notch up top.

Well, looks like the Cupertino crew may agree, as a product roadmap shared by research firm Omdia seemingly confirms that Apple’s planning to ditch the notch on the MacBook Pro in favor of a small hole punch for the webcam.

Apple has fumbled Face ID on a MacBook
The company isn’t the biggest fan of larger cutouts on its laptops

But fair warning — you may be waiting a while, as this is set to come with a redesign around OLED in 2026, which corroborates another leak we reported on early last month. That means M5 Pros will still come with the frustrating cutout.

A notch job

iPhone 13 image zoomed in at the notch. — (Image credit: Future)

And honestly, I can’t blame the team for feeling this way. When it came to the first time we saw the notch in the iPhone X, iOS was baked around its presence.

Face ID gives a fast and secure way to unlock your phone, small bits of information are placed on either side, and interacting with either side gives you a different core function.

MacBook Pro 16-inch (M4 Pro, 2024) — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Meanwhile in MacBook land, the notch adds nothing — in fact, it can actually take away from a power user experience. There are no interactions with this area on the display, you can lose your mouse cursor behind it, and if you are a menu bar app addict like mine, there is no barrier to the amount you have. They will disappear under the notch.

Yes, there are apps like Bartender and moving system icons to appear in the Control Center, but that adds additional layers of clicks that slow down my navigation of macOS. So honestly, I’m pretty glad it’s going.

But what is it even for?

Face ID on iPhone — (Image credit: Future)

Now, if the notch itself was used for anything impactful to the user experience, that could’ve gone some way to forgiving its presence. I mean Apple packed the iPhone’s cutout with all kinds of sensors to support Face ID, but none of this made it to the MacBook. I wish I could’ve been able to just scan my face to unlock like Windows Hello, but nope!

All that’s in there is a webcam, so really, what’s the point? It's not as if Apple wasn't thinking about it — there are patents after all. So since the team's not going to do this, it makes sense to ditch it in favor of more of a subtle, small hole.

And I swear, if I see another person mention the words “Dynamic Island on a MacBook,” reread the last few paragraphs. Apple has done nothing to cater macOS to a notch, and the company has shown no intention to add anything newsworthy to this unnecessary impediment to the menu bar.

Sometimes, the best answer is just the easiest — a small webcam presence atop the display. Let’s not overcomplicate it. Give me more of that Tandem OLED goodness, because if the iPad Pro M4 is anything to go by, the MacBook Pro’s next gen display tech is going to stun.

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Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.