This is almost too easy. One of the best ways to become more productive is focus. I’m not a believer in The Church of Multi-tasking and prefer the tried and true way to get more done. Focus on what needs to be done and avoid distractions wherever possible.
For those of us who slave over our hot keyboards throughout the day, how is improved focus even possible? After all, there’s email, notifications, messages, websites to be browsed, Calendar to view, and apps to be used on this and that.
One way that works for me is to eliminate the screen clutter on my Mac so I can focus on the task at hand. How? Hides.
The value of Hides goes far beyond the few bucks it costs. Hides hides everything on your Mac’s screen that’s not related to the app you’re using at the time.
Hides resides in the Mac’s Menubar and gives you simple controls that hide all open apps so your Mac’s screen is pristinely clean. Gone is the clutter on the Desktop, the Dock and all those app icons beckoning you to click. The screen is clean and ready to be used.
The Single App Mode lets you select a single app and use that without the distraction of other apps to grab your eyes. Keyboard shortcuts invoke Hides from the keyboard (and you set the key combo). It even allows for Notifications to be visible if you prefer.
Hides does well what it does but I would like to see is a dual app mode, or a mode where I can select which apps are always visible on the de-cluttered screen. Some of us actually use more than one app at a time during the workflow, often copying from one app and switching to another to paste it in. The Command-Tab switcher works for that, of course, but a simple click to another app’s window is faster.
Otherwise, Hides is nicely done, simple to setup, and the added focus on a single app or task can improve your productivity. Multi-tasking is highly overrated.