Show HN: Zen Mode – a global focus mode for macOS

by cafebeen • 10 days ago

30 12 10 days ago

cafebeen5• 10 days ago

Author here, I made this macOS tool "Zen Mode" to provide a global focus mode that works across apps. There are plenty of things approaching this (HazeOver, Stage Manager, built-in full-screen mode, etc.) but nothing quite like I imagined. The basic idea is to have a shortcut to bring the current window front and center and fade everything else to black like a spotlight, and when you're done, the window returns home, and the lights come back up. A simple solution with about 250 lines of Hammerspoon Lua, built with Fable, though with many iterations to get the UX right. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback.

alberth• 10 days ago

Looks nice, congrats.

Ironically, my “Zen Mode” hack was just to use a smaller display … that way I only had room for 1-window open at a time.

cafebeen5• 10 days ago

Indeed, if only Apple still made an 11-inch macbook air...

jorisw• 10 days ago

I just enable pixel zoom and ctrl-scroll-to-zoom into the window I want to focus on

daft_pink• 10 days ago

I wish I could have a tool like this that would focus multiple windows from different apps this way. My workflow just requires different apps at the same time.

cafebeen5• 10 days ago

Would be great, and it's technically possible to spotlight multiple windows in this setup. But I wonder about the mechanics of picking the right apps. One way is to use named sets, e.g. dev=(iTerm2, Safari), each with their own shortcut. Another is to to focus one window and then use Cmd+Tab as an picker to choose which app to add next. I guess it depends on whether the arrangement is changing or relatively stable.

loughnane2• 10 days ago

As someone who has been on i3/xfce/debian for years and hasn’t opened Mac since 2013… can someone explain this to me? I hear “bring current window to front and fade everything else” and it feels like how it ought to be by default. Is it not?

cafebeen5• 10 days ago

I agree this should be built-in. Many apps have their own "focus mode", but I wanted something that works uniformly across all apps. There is a full-screen mode in macOS, but it stretches the widow and context to full width, which doesn't pan out too well in some apps (lots of empty space or lines that are too long to read comfortably). So this preserves the window width but extends the height when focused, which works well for my daily drivers. The "fade" is somewhat unusual too, which means everything else is darkened close to black, which I find visually suppressing things and reduces distraction.

By the way, repo has an animated demo in case you want to see how it works.

loughnane2• 10 days ago

I get it now. Nice thought. Hope people find it useful.

desktopentree• 10 days ago

I agree with other comments that a multi-app version would be great. Overall, very simple and functions well. I like it.

kornork• 6 days ago

When I enter Zen Mode, my notifications are brought along for the ride, which is not what I had hoped for. I get a ton of persistent notifications and I just tend to let them stay until I have time to look (obviously creating a very anti-zen cluttered screen). Known issue?

cafebeen5• 6 days ago

It's a known issue now! I have have all notifications silenced, so I haven't seen this behavior. Will reproduce and try look into a fix, thanks

Show HN: Zen Mode – a global focus mode for macOS

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