Show Mode user guide

Show Mode is a menu-bar app that locks a Mac down for a show, then puts every setting back how you had it. One click (or ⌃⌥⌘S) stops the machine sleeping, stops the things that slide over the screen when an operator’s hand slips (hot corners, Mission Control, the click-to-show-desktop wallpaper, notification banners), stops the colour of the picture drifting with the time of day, and keeps the mouse cursor off the screens the audience is looking at.

Field proven: Show Mode has been used on real events, not just on the bench.

Checked on the bench: I ran the power, screen saver, hot corner, Mission Control, True Tone and Night Shift guards end to end on a MacBook Pro running macOS 26.4, and checked restoring three ways: ending show mode, killing the app outright and relaunching it, and stopping it with SIGTERM. Every setting came back (but see Mission Control below: coming back isn’t the same as having worked). The wallpaper blackout was checked the same three ways on macOS 26.4.1, but only on its own (not as part of a full show-mode start) and only on one display.

Checked on a second screen (v0.3.0): with a real extended display attached (a Roland USB video output) and a virtual one, the cursor fence held a gliding pointer at the edge with Accessibility granted and pulled back a pointer warped onto the show screen, and pausing and resuming it worked. The display lock (now the screen layout lock) split a mirrored display back to extended, made the locked display main again after something else took over, gave up after repeated reversals instead of fighting, and put the original main display back at the end of the show and after the app was killed mid-show.

Do Not Disturb (checked 2026-09-29, macOS 26.4.1): both shortcuts ran and switched Do Not Disturb on and off, and show mode turned it on at the start, off at the end, and off again on the next launch after being killed mid-show.

Checked 2026-09-29 (v0.3.1): the fence without Accessibility, which pulls the pointer back within one mouse step and hides it near the show screen, and hiding the cursor from a background app; the main-display warning, both its buttons, and the rule that the last screen can’t be blocked; and pinning the light/dark appearance, which System Settings showed switching from Auto to the showing appearance and back, including after a crash.

Privacy dots (v0.4.0): finding a dot and the screen it’s on, naming the app using the microphone, telling screen recording apart, and reading whether the Recovery step has been done were all checked on macOS 26.4.1. Not checked: actually hiding the dots, which needs the Recovery step on a Mac with an external display, and noticing the camera in use.

Swipe between Spaces (v0.4.0, checked 2026-10-06 on macOS 26.4.1): on a MacBook Pro’s built-in trackpad, three- and four-finger sideways swipes stopped switching desktops during the show. The swipe settings came back when the show ended and on the next launch after the app was killed mid-show, and a three-finger swipe set to Swipe between pages was left as it was. Not checked: a Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse in hand (their settings are switched off and back the same way).

System sounds (v0.5.0, checked 2026-10-09 on macOS 26.4.1): with the alert volume at half and interface sound effects and volume feedback on, starting a show turned all three off, and macOS’s own readings agreed. An interface sound effect and the volume-key pop then sent nothing to the audio output. Both played again after the show ended, on the next launch after the app was killed mid-show, and after it was stopped with SIGTERM, and the alert volume came back to its exact value. A sound that was already off was left alone. Output volume and mute weren’t touched. Not checked by ear: the alert beep itself. macOS still runs a silent beep through the output at alert volume 0, so the check there is that show mode leaves the same setting as dragging the slider to zero.

Background work, interruptions and remote sessions (v0.5.0, checked 2026-10-11 on macOS 26.4.1): on a MacBook Pro, photo and media analysis were paused, and with the password so were Spotlight’s indexing workers (the system’s own and new ones started mid-show) and AWDL. All of them were running again at the end of the show. After the app was killed outright mid-show, the pause undid itself within five seconds and the relaunch put the rest back. Automatic macOS and App Store updates went off at the start and back on at the end, and on the next launch after a crash. Cancelling the password prompt at the start changed nothing; cancelling it at the end left only the update settings, which the next launch put back. ⌘Space opened nothing during the show and Spotlight again after. A test app that crashed mid-show opened no “quit unexpectedly” window, and its report was still saved. AirPlay Receiver stopped listening at the start and was back at the end and after a crash. Muting other apps was checked by ear and then by recording what reached a loopback output with test tones: a sound started during the show by an app not allowed to play never reached the output, nor did one aimed straight at that output by its own app; an allowed app opened mid-show was heard alongside it; and when Show Mode was killed the muted sound came back at once. A sound already playing when the show started carried on until it stopped, as the guide now says. No permission prompt and no privacy dot appeared (built-in display only). Stage Manager went off and came back. A wallpaper another app set mid-show was black again within seven seconds. A test connection on port 5900 showed as a remote session, and its end was logged. Game Mode was forced on and went back to automatic, after a crash too. Update checks went off and came back for a running Sparkle app and for Microsoft AutoUpdate. The pre-show checks found a waiting macOS update, OneDrive, battery power and Wi-Fi. Not checked: Time Machine (it was off on that Mac); whether Spotlight catches up without re-indexing, and how much any of this saves on a real show; real Syncthing (only a stand-in for its interface), the five sync apps (TextEdit stood in for the list), a real remote session, TeamViewer, and the blacked-out-display warning; whether a running app takes the update-check change without a relaunch; Keyboard Setup Assistant, which needs a device macOS doesn’t recognise; and what the experimental user-activity heartbeat changes.

Mission Control (v0.6.0, checked 2026-10-20 on macOS 26.4.1): the Mission Control guard in v0.5.0 and earlier stopped nothing on this macOS. The bench check above watched its settings go off and come back, not Mission Control staying shut, and the Dock ignores the setting it writes unless that setting is forced. With it on, ⌃↑ and ⌃↓ still opened Mission Control and App Exposé, and so did a Logitech MX Master’s buttons through Logi Options+. With the new shortcut switch-off, ⌃↑, ⌃↓, the Mission Control key and F11 opened nothing, and all four worked again afterwards. With the setting forced (the new admin guard’s own start and end steps, run on their own with the password), nothing opened Mission Control, App Exposé or Show Desktop, whether asked the way Logi Options+ asks or from the keyboard. At the end the file and its folders went and App Exposé opened again. Not checked: a full show start and end with the new guards (a real show was running on that Mac, so only their own steps were run); the mouse button pressed by hand (the test sent the Dock the same request Logi Options+ sends); the trackpad gestures under the forced setting; a Mac with managed Dock settings of its own; and macOS before 26.

Screen layout lock and PowerPoint (v0.6.0, checked 2026-11-03 on macOS 26.4.1, PowerPoint 16.112.3): on virtual displays only, two made in software beside a MacBook Pro’s built-in screen, with a test copy of Show Mode that had every other guard switched off. With the built-in screen cloned to one and the other extended, a Presenter View show made PowerPoint split the clone; show mode moved the slides to the extended screen and put the clone back within a second and a half, so Presenter View was on the built-in screen and its clone, and nothing changed when the show ended. With every screen extended and Presenter View off, PowerPoint mirrored one; show mode split it and moved the slides onto it. A mirror made by hand mid-show was split again in under half a second. With only the clone, and nowhere free for the slides, the clone stayed split with a steady note in the menu and PowerPoint put it back at the end. Not checked: real monitors and projectors; macOS asking for permission to control PowerPoint (the test copy inherited a permission already given, so neither the question nor a refusal was seen); the two new menu items used by hand; a full show start with every guard on; and Keynote, which this doesn’t cover.

Not yet checked: the screen layout lock with AirPlay, Sidecar or DisplayLink screens, which may not answer the mirroring call the way a cabled display does; and a real sunset under a pinned appearance (the pin itself was checked, but not an evening switch it holds off). If your show uses one of those screens, try it with them connected before the show. Released at v0.6.0. v0.3.1 is field proven; the guards new in v0.4.0 (privacy dots, swipe between Spaces), v0.5.0 (everything marked v0.5.0 above) and v0.6.0 (the Mission Control fix and the screen layout lock’s PowerPoint handling) haven’t been run on a show yet. v0.5.0 also draws the menu-bar masks in the menu bar’s own colour, white over the blacked-out wallpaper, instead of red; a capture of the menu bar during a show (2026-10-11, macOS 26.4.1) showed them solid white on the black bar.

This codebase was created with AI assistance, directed and reviewed by a human author.

Install

Download the .dmg from the latest release, open it and drag Show Mode to Applications. It’s signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens normally. Or use Homebrew:

brew tap stoatworks-labs/tap
brew trust --tap stoatworks-labs/tap
brew install --cask showmode

Show Mode needs macOS 13 or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. It lives in the menu bar as a pair of theatre masks and doesn’t have a Dock icon.

Starting and ending a show

Click the masks and choose Start Show Mode, or press ⌃⌥⌘S anywhere. The masks turn solid while show mode is on, drawn in the menu bar’s own colour, so they show up white over the blacked-out wallpaper. End Show Mode (or ⌃⌥⌘S again) puts everything back.

If something couldn’t be applied (Do Not Disturb before its shortcuts are installed, say, or a cancelled password prompt), a short note appears under the menu bar for a few seconds and stays listed in the menu, marked ⚠︎, until the show ends. It doesn’t use a notification for this, since show mode may just have silenced them.

What it turns off

You can switch any guard off in What Show Mode Disables. A change there takes effect at the next start.

Starting show mode restarts the Dock once, so the Dock and the menu bar flicker for a moment. Do it before doors rather than during a cue.

Mission Control and mouse buttons

If your mouse has a button set to Mission Control or App Exposé (Logitech’s MX mice come that way: the thumb button, and swiping with it held down), the ordinary Mission Control guard won’t stop it. Logi Options+ doesn’t press a shortcut for you. It asks the Dock directly, and the Dock does as it’s told. The setting that’s meant to switch Mission Control off only counts when it comes from managed settings, the kind a company’s IT department installs with a profile. Written by anyone else, the Dock reads it and carries on regardless.

Stop mouse & other apps opening Mission Control writes that setting where managed settings live (/Library/Managed Preferences), which is why it wants your password, and restarts the Dock. After that nothing opens Mission Control, App Exposé or Show Desktop, from the mouse or the keyboard. At the end of the show the file goes, along with any folder Show Mode made for it, and Mission Control comes back. If your Mac already has managed settings for the Dock, they’re left alone, and a note warns that the mouse may still get through.

Keeping the cursor off the show screens

Under Keep cursor off, tick each screen the audience sees. Screens are remembered by their make, model and serial number, so your choice survives unplugging them and restarting. The screen with the menu bar is marked so you can tell the built-in panel apart.

The cursor always keeps at least one screen. You can’t tick the last unticked screen, so on a Mac with only one screen there’s nothing to tick. Ticking the main display (the one with the menu bar, Show Mode’s own menu and the Dock) asks first, because during the show you couldn’t reach any of those with the mouse. Usually the better fix is to choose the operator screen under Main Display, so the menu bar stays there for the show.

How hard the fence is depends on one permission:

• With Accessibility granted (Setup → Grant Accessibility for a hard cursor fence): every mouse movement that would land on a show screen is caught on its way in and moved to the nearest point on a screen you can use. In testing, a pointer glided at a show screen in 10-pixel steps stopped dead at the edge; in 2 of 12 runs one sample caught it a few pixels over for less than one step (under 10 ms) before it was pulled back.
• Without it, Show Mode checks the cursor 120 times a second and moves it back. In testing, one movement of the mouse (about 10 pixels at a normal pace, 60 on a fast flick) could land on the show screen for up to 8 ms before being pulled back. So it also hides the cursor within 48 pixels of a show screen: an ordinary approach never gets drawn on the other side, and only a flick that starts further away than that can show for an instant. Turn the hiding off with Hide cursor if it reaches a blocked screen if you’d rather see it. Granting Accessibility is the better answer on a show machine.

⌃⌥⌘F pauses the fence (press it again to resume) when you need to reach a show screen on purpose, to drag a window onto it, say. The masks change to a circle while it’s paused.

The fence also stands down on its own rather than trap you: if every screen is ticked, or the only screen you left unticked gets unplugged, it does nothing until that changes.

Screen layout lock

With Screen layout lock on (it is by default), show mode holds on to the display arrangement the show started with: which screen is main, which screens are clones of which, and which are extended.

The main display stays put. The main display is the one with the menu bar and the Dock, and it’s where new windows and a lot of apps’ dialogs appear. Choose it under Main Display, or leave that on Whichever is main at start. If anything makes a different screen main during the show (a display reconnecting, say, or a projector macOS remembers from another venue), show mode moves it back within about a second. The arrangement itself is kept: the screens stay where they are relative to each other, and only which one carries the menu bar changes back. If the display you chose isn’t connected at start, show mode says so and makes it main the moment it appears.

Clones stay clones. Whatever’s mirrored when the show starts is taken as intentional (the laptop’s screen cloned to a monitor at the desk, say). If something splits a clone during the show, show mode puts it back about a second later.

The something is usually PowerPoint. Plug a MacBook into a desk monitor cloned to the laptop and a projector extended, start a slide show with Presenter View, and PowerPoint splits the clone, puts Presenter View on the laptop alone and the slides on the desk monitor, which it has just made into a third screen. The projector, the one screen the audience can see, shows the desktop. Show mode moves PowerPoint’s slides onto the projector and clones the desk monitor back to the laptop, so Presenter View is on both. In testing it was all done within a second and a half of the show starting. When the show ends, PowerPoint goes to put back the mirror it split, finds it already there, and carries on as if that had been the plan all along.

To move the slides, show mode needs permission to control PowerPoint. With PowerPoint open, choose Setup → Let Show Mode Move PowerPoint’s Slides… before doors and say yes when macOS asks. Skip it and macOS is likely to ask at the first show instead, over Presenter View, which is a poor moment to be reading dialogs. If it’s been refused, that item opens the switch in System Settings (Privacy & Security → Automation). Without it, show mode leaves the clone split rather than put a mirror on top of the slides, and says so in its menu.

PowerPoint Slides On chooses the screen the slides go to. Left on The first screen extended at start, they go to the first screen that was extended when the show started (the projector, in the setup above). If there’s no such screen free, a laptop with only the cloned monitor say, the slides have nowhere else to go: the clone stays split for the show, with a note in the menu. The same happens, naming the app, if anything other than PowerPoint is full screen on the split-off monitor. Show mode keeps checking every few seconds and puts the clone back as soon as nothing is in the way.

New mirrors become extended. Any screen that starts mirroring during the show, whether it’s a newly plugged-in projector macOS has decided to mirror or a stray ⌘F1, is split back out to an extended display about a second later. PowerPoint does this one too: start a show without Presenter View with every screen extended and it mirrors them all, so the projector gets a copy of the laptop’s screen at the laptop’s resolution and shape. Show mode splits the mirror and moves the slides onto the projector at its own resolution, or leaves the mirror alone (with a note) if it isn’t allowed to move them. With a clone already in place and Presenter View off, PowerPoint changes nothing and shows the slides on the main display and its clone, and show mode has nothing to undo. If you want the slides on the projector, use Presenter View.

Changing which display is main makes every screen blink for a moment, the way it does in System Settings. Show mode only does it when something else has already moved the main display, but choose the main display before doors rather than mid-cue. If something keeps undoing the arrangement (four corrections inside twenty seconds), show mode stops fighting it, says so in its menu, and leaves the screens alone for the rest of the show. Whatever it is, it clearly wants the displays more than show mode does.

When the show ends, the display that was main before it becomes main again. Screens that were split out of a new mirror stay extended: that mirror was macOS’s guess, not yours.

Choosing a main display that’s also fenced off puts the menu bar out of the cursor’s reach, so show mode warns you at start. ⌃⌥⌘F pauses the fence.

Notifications

macOS gives apps no way to switch Do Not Disturb on, so Show Mode uses two tiny shortcuts to do it instead. Choose Setup → Install Do Not Disturb shortcuts. After about half a minute Shortcuts asks you to add Show Mode Focus On and Show Mode Focus Off; add both. From then on show mode runs them itself. Until they’re installed, show mode skips Do Not Disturb and says so.

The shortcuts switch the built-in Do Not Disturb Focus, not any custom Focus you’ve made. Whatever that Focus lets through (people or apps you’ve allowed in System Settings → Focus → Do Not Disturb) still gets through, so check its allow list on the show machine.

Keeping other apps off the PA

macOS 26 or later. When the Mac’s output feeds a PA, Outlook’s new-mail chime or a browser tab is one stray click away from the audience. With Mute apps not allowed to play ticked, every app is silent during the show except the ones ticked under Allowed to Play in the menu: your show app, and anything else that should be heard. The menu lists the apps that are open, marks the ones playing sound right now, and remembers your choices. An allowed app opened after the show starts is heard straight away.

• The muting catches each sound as it starts. A sound that’s already playing when the show starts, such as a browser tab or music, carries on until it stops. The note at the start of a show names those apps: pause them, or tick them if they belong in the show.
• Tick the show app before doors. Ticking or unticking mid-show works, but it lets through any muted sound that happens to be playing at that moment, until that sound stops.
• Apps that send sound to their own interface (QLab, a DAW) are muted too unless ticked. Muting is per app, not per output.
• Nothing is turned down. The output’s volume and mute are never touched, and if Show Mode quits or crashes every app is heard again straight away. A failure costs you the protection, and never silences the show.
• macOS asks for no permission and shows no recording dot for this, because Show Mode never listens to the sound it mutes.

Privacy dots

macOS draws a coloured dot while an app uses the microphone (orange), the camera (green) or records the screen (purple). No app can turn these off. Apple’s own setting (macOS 14.4 or later) leaves the microphone and camera dots off an external display showing a full-screen app, and it comes with conditions:

• the main display always keeps its dots, so make the operator’s screen the main display (Main Display in the menu);
• the purple screen-recording dot can’t be hidden anywhere;
• it needs a one-time step in Recovery, which no app can do for you.

The one-time step. Start up in Recovery (on Apple silicon, shut down, then hold the power button until Loading startup options appears; on Intel, hold ⌘R at startup), choose Utilities → Terminal and run:

system-override suppress-sw-camera-indication-on-external-displays=on

Then restart. Setup in Show Mode’s menu shows whether this has been done. After that, with Hide privacy dots on full-screen external displays ticked, show mode turns the dots off on external displays at the start of each show and back on at the end (it’s the same switch as Privacy Indicators under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone). To undo the step, run the same command with =off in Recovery.

Whether or not you’ve done it, show mode tells you at the start of a show if a dot is showing, on which screen and why: the app using the microphone, the camera, or (when it’s neither) screen recording. The same line stays in the menu, marked ⚠︎, while the dot shows.

Background work

A show Mac left untouched for hours looks idle to macOS, and idle is when macOS and every other app get stuck into their housekeeping: indexing, photo analysis, backups, updates. The cost is disk, network and heat more than processor time (on Apple silicon that work runs on the efficiency cores), and heat matters most on a fanless MacBook Air.

Pausing, not switching off. Photo and media analysis and Spotlight’s indexing are paused for the show and resumed afterwards, so nothing has to start again from scratch. A small helper pauses them and checks every two seconds for new copies. It resumes everything at the end of the show, and by itself as soon as Show Mode goes away, crash included. While they’re paused, Photos, Live Text and Visual Look Up wait, and files that change aren’t added to Spotlight until the show ends. Spotlight search itself keeps working.

Spotlight indexing needs your password, because some of its processes belong to the system. It covers every drive, including one plugged in mid-show, and writes nothing to the drives themselves.

Time Machine needs your password and Full Disk Access: without it macOS cheerfully reports that backups are off when they aren’t. Show mode checks and tells you. To give it access, choose Setup → Full Disk Access (to pause Time Machine) and turn on Show Mode in the list. Automatic backups come back on at the end of the show if they were on before.

What I’ve left alone on purpose: the processes that answer Spotlight searches, iCloud, security scanning, anything to do with Apple Intelligence (switching it off can delete its models and download them again), and Location Services (macOS 26 doesn’t let an app switch it off).

Pre-show checks

Some things no app can safely switch off. Pre-show Checks in the menu lists the ones it finds on this Mac, each with the one thing to do about it:

• A macOS update is waiting. If anyone chooses Install Tonight, macOS installs it and restarts overnight whatever the settings say, and that can’t be cancelled.
• Updates managed by your organisation can restart the Mac, or quit Office apps, on their deadline.
• Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive can only be paused from their own menus, and Dropbox keeps syncing after it quits. Arq, Carbon Copy Cloner, Backblaze, ChronoSync can start a backup mid-show: pause or disable them for the show.
• Security software that opens its own windows or scans on a schedule: Intego, Sophos, Trend Micro, Norton, LuLu, BlockBlock and Microsoft Defender each get their own line. Security software run by your IT team is never touched. Do Not Disturb already silences the ones that use ordinary notifications (Malwarebytes, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, ESET, ClamXAV).
• The Mac itself: running hot, running on battery, or a network on Wi-Fi.
• A remote session is active (see below).

The menu also reminds you of two things to do before doors: allow any “find devices on your local network” prompt (NDI and Dante find nothing until it’s allowed, and don’t give you an error to say so), and plug in every accessory, so a laptop never asks “Allow accessory to connect?” during the show.

The ones that can change during the show (a remote session, heat, battery, the network) also stay at the top of the menu, marked ⚠︎, while it runs.

Remote access

Show mode doesn’t block remote access, since whoever runs the show may need it. But several remote-access tools change what the audience sees when someone connects. RustDesk’s privacy mode blacks out every display, Jump Desktop and Splashtop can change the resolution, Splashtop and Parsec can add a virtual display, Apple’s high-performance Screen Sharing blanks the screens, and TeamViewer puts its own idea of the wallpaper back when a session ends.

With Watch for remote sessions & keep the output black ticked, show mode checks every five seconds. It names an active session in the menu and in its log (Screen Sharing or VNC, Apple Remote Desktop, NoMachine, AnyDesk and TeamViewer are recognised), warns if a display has been blacked out (in the menu, marked ⚠︎), and puts the black wallpaper back if anything changed it. The screen layout lock keeps your main display main whatever a session does. If you use a remote tool on the show Mac, set it not to change the resolution or the wallpaper on connect, and rehearse with it.

Driving it from somewhere else

Show Mode answers a URL scheme, so Companion, a show-control script or a Terminal can drive it:

open showmode://on

The others are showmode://off, showmode://toggle, showmode://fence-on, showmode://fence-off, showmode://wallpaper-black and showmode://wallpaper-restore.

Blacking out the wallpaper on its own

Black Out Wallpaper in the menu (or showmode://wallpaper-black) blacks out every screen without starting show mode, for a rehearsal or a desktop share. Restore Wallpaper puts it back and leaves everything else alone. Ending show mode, quitting, or a relaunch after a crash also restores it.

What it did

Show mode keeps a plain log of what it changes at ~/Library/Logs/ShowMode.log: the fence coming on and in which mode, and every correction the screen layout lock makes. Console.app opens it.

Putting things back

Before Show Mode changes anything it writes down what was there, in ~/Library/Application Support/ShowMode/journal.plist. Ending the show restores those values and nothing else, so a setting you’d already switched off yourself stays off. The same happens when you quit, when a launcher stops the app, and if the app crashes or the Mac restarts mid-show: the next launch finds the journal, restores it, and tells you it did.

Settings that need your password are put back with one password prompt at the end of the show. If you cancel it, show mode tells you what it couldn’t put back and keeps a note of it: Finish Restoring in the menu asks again, and so does the next launch.

Launch at Login (in Setup) is worth turning on for a show machine, so a restart mid-show is followed by a clean restore.

Running it from source

git clone https://github.com/stoatworks-labs/showmode
cd showmode
scripts/build-app.sh

That builds a universal dist/Show Mode.app. swift build on its own gives you a bare executable for development; .build/debug/ShowMode --status prints what it can see without changing anything.