ATMac

Do you have problems with getting distracted by the other windows on your screen, but you don’t want to hide them completely from view? Isolater and Menu Eclipse might be just what you need.

Isolator
Isolater hides all the windows except the ones in the application you’re currently using.

When you’re working on a document, and don’t want to be distracted, turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on it, as well as the windows of all your other applications, so you can concentrate on the task in hand.

You can configure Isolator so that the hidden windows are completely invisible, greyed out, or blurred in various different ways, and it’s easy to turn its effects on and off with the menu extra.

Menu Eclipse
This one greys out the menu bar itself, at the top of your screen.

Gain better focus on your work and play, and away from the menu bar.

I configured it so that the menu bar switches back to being completely visible when the mouse is over it. The option for this is confusingly named with a double negative, “Don’t hide the eclipse when cursor is over” but luckily it’s the default setting anyway. You can switch Menu Eclipse on and off with a menu extra too.

I set Isolator to hide my background windows with a black tint of about 75% strength:

And then opened the Menu Eclipse preferences and just fiddled with the slider for “Eclipse Amount” until it was not quite as dark as the background and generally looked right to me. It turned out to be 70% strength:

Together these two applications make a great deal of difference to how distracting the space around your active windows can be. And they’re both free to use, so price needn’t be a problem.

- Ricky Buchanan, ATMac