Quick Summary
Apple reportedly intends to replace the MacBook Pro's camera notch with a pin-hole camera.
The move is said to be happening in 2026, alongside a switch to OLED displays.
Love it or hate it, you can't miss it – the MacBook Pro's notch, the section where the Face ID camera lives, is a very visible part of the Mac's screen. However, a new report says that it's going to be sent off to the same farm where the Touch Bar now resides.
It claims that the notch is going to be removed, starting with the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models in 2026.
That timescale is the same one we've been hearing regarding the switch from the current mini-LED MacBook Pros to OLED MacBook Pros, which makes sense – it should be less work to do it at the same time as switching to a different kind of panel.
What's happening to the notch?
The news comes via MacRumors, who spotted a roadmap published by Omdia. The analytics firm has a pretty good track record when it comes to this kind of thing.
According to the roadmap, the notch will be removed from the two larger MacBook Pro models and replaced with a hole-punch camera. What we don't yet know is whether that camera will be there by itself, much like the selfie shooters in Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S24, or if the Dynamic Island will make its way across from the iPhone 16.
That latter option would still mean considerably less screen space lost to the camera section than with the notch.
Omdia says that the notch isn't going away completely, though. It estimates that it's going to remain on the MacBook Air, possibly until at least 2028.
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The move to OLED and a notchless display is a big one, but there will be new MacBook Pro models before those ones ship. Don't expect any significant changes at that time, however – they'll be speed-bump models in 2025 to deliver the M5 processors.
Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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