Notifyr Lets You Receive iOS Notifications on Your Mac

Developed by Joost van Dijk, Notifyr is a handy utility that lets you receive iOS notifications on your Mac using Bluetooth Low Energy. I’ve been trying the app with my iPhone 5s and mid-2011 MacBook Air since yesterday, and it does indeed work as advertised, mirroring notification banners from any iOS app on my Mac.

Notifyr uses the Bluetooth LE technology available in recent Macs and iOS devices to let the iOS app communicate in the background with a OS X preference pane without consuming too much battery life. After an initial pairing process, Notifyr will monitor all the notifications you receive on your iOS device and send them to the Mac app, which will display a native OS X notification using the icon of the original sender app.

Notifyr works with any iOS app and, in my tests, it was fast and quickly reconnected to my Mac when I returned home and sat down at my desk again. It’s particularly useful if you like to keep your phone quiet or in your pocket during the work day but still would like to receive notifications for apps that don’t have Mac counterparts or just make sure that you see notifications from an iPhone as soon as they’re received, but on your computer’s screen. As shown in the screenshot above, you can also mute specific apps so you won’t end up with duplicates for apps that have desktop versions (such as Messages and Mail).

Notifyr for iOS is $3.99 on the App Store, and the OS X utility can be downloaded for free from the Notifyr website.