I find the idea of “distraction-free” writing apps to be bunk: after all, why on Earth would the presence or lack of a menubar make any difference to your ability to concentrate? I am, however, a sworn enemy of clutter, and so I immediately downloaded the $0.99 Focus app, which is kind of like a virtual rug under which you can sweep your mess of Mac application windows.
Focus puts a translucent curtain behind your frontmost window or app in order to keep things a little tidier. I know that you can work with your apps in full-screen mode these days, but then you lose the advantages multiple windows in the same workspace, which to me is one of the Mac’s major advantages over iOS.
The translucent layer can be adjusted for color and opacity, and you can choose whether it’ll sit behind just the current window or all windows of the frontmost application. The effect is something like the look of Exposé when you show all windows, and in fact the little dark blanket keeps working when you invoke Exposé.
But best of all is the fact that it doesn’t actually block any windows, so you can keep everything half-hidden in the background and yet still drag and drop between apps, unlike full-screen mode which makes such things tricky.
And all for a buck.
Source: Mac App Store
