PrivacyToggle

A lightweight macOS menu bar app that instantly hides desktop clutter for clean, distraction-free screen sharing.

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Features

• One-click privacy mode -toggle from the menu bar in one click or with the P keyboard shortcut
• Desktop icon overlay -covers all Finder desktop icons with your current wallpaper, so nothing personal is visible behind your active window
• Hides inactive windows -automatically sends all background apps to hide, leaving only your frontmost app visible
• Multi-monitor support -the overlay spans every connected display simultaneously
• Fully restores on disable -all hidden apps and windows come back exactly as they were
• No Dock icon -runs silently as a menu bar agent, out of your way
• Zero networking -the app makes no outbound connections of any kind; fully air-gapped by the macOS sandbox
• Mac App Store sandbox compliant -no private APIs, no accessibility permissions, no screen recording required

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Requirements

• macOS 13 Ventura or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac

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Installation

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap tarek-clarke/privacytoggle
brew install --cask privacytoggle

First launch note: Because the app is not yet notarized, macOS Gatekeeper will show a warning the first time you open it. Right-click → Open to bypass it -you won't be prompted again.

Manual

1. Download PrivacyToggle.dmg from the latest release
2. Open the DMG and drag PrivacyToggle.app to your Applications folder
3. Launch the app -the 👁 icon will appear in your menu bar

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Usage

Action	How
Enable privacy mode	Click the menu bar icon → Enable Privacy Mode, or press P
Disable privacy mode	Click the menu bar icon → Disable Privacy Mode, or press P
Quit	Click the menu bar icon → Quit PrivacyToggle, or press Q

When privacy mode is on, the menu bar icon switches from eye.slash to eye so you always know the current state at a glance.

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How It Works

1. Desktop overlay -a borderless, full-screen NSWindow is placed just above the Finder desktop icon layer (kCGDesktopIconWindowLevel + 1). It renders your current wallpaper where readable, falling back to a neutral solid colour. Normal application windows sit above it, so your active app is always fully visible.

2. Window hiding -NSRunningApplication.hide() is called on every regular app that is not the current frontmost app. When you disable privacy mode, unhide() restores them all.

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Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/tarek-clarke/PrivacyToggle.git
cd PrivacyToggle
open PrivacyToggle.xcodeproj

Then Product → Run in Xcode, or from the terminal:

xcodebuild -scheme PrivacyToggle -configuration Release build

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Privacy & Security

• No network entitlements -com.apple.security.network.client and .network.server are absent from the sandbox, blocking all TCP/UDP at the OS level
• NSAllowsArbitraryLoads = false in Info.plist as an additional ATS layer
• No Accessibility, Screen Recording, or any other sensitive permission is requested
• Full source is available in this repository for audit

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License

MIT