Hocus Focus

Hocus Focus

A Mac menu bar utility that hides your inactive windows

9 followers

Hocus Focus gallery image
Hocus Focus gallery image
Hocus Focus gallery image
Hocus Focus gallery image
Hocus Focus gallery image
Launch Team

What do you think? …

Nial
Hey guys! I'm the developer behind Hocus Focus. The application's been around since 2011 under the name of Houdini, but was recently rewritten from the ground-up and relaunched as a modern Yosemite-friendly application. I'll try my best to answer any questions people have!
Ria Blagburn
@nialgiacomelli This looks ace, Nial! I really like that you can alter the settings on a per-app basis. I also appreciate your love for BMO :) I saw on the Hocus Focus site that you decided to remove the app from the App Store - what impact has this had on your downloads?
Nial
@riaface It's a little too early to tell with regards to impact on downloads, but the Mac App Store is substantially less busy than the iOS variant - which meant Houdini would regularly chart fairly highly. I expect downloads to take a slight dip given that less people are likely to come across it while casually browsing the App Store.
Tyson Quick
@nialgiacomelli You should really accept Bitcoin donations vs Coinbase as well.
Miles Varghese
@nialgiacomelli There's no menu associate with the app. how do I uninstall once it's open? Cant drag and drop.
lwsmith10011
@measuredweighed -- name your file. I delete latest.zip as virus.
Micah Baldwin
Interesting app - does it auto display a window that gets a notif or update? i.e., imessages/skype, email, etc. Love the dual use case of HF and Bartender to keep things clean and focused. Would be great to have the ability to hide a window for X time -- meaning that I can hide a window, and it will not become active for X minutes (sort of like Concentrate)
Nial
@micah Thanks for the kind words! Currently it won't auto display a window when it receives a notification. It'll bounce in the dock as normal and you can choose to redisplay it with a click. I like the idea of hiding windows for a certain period of time. One area I'm particularly interested in expanding is rule-based behaviour. i.e: if application X is in use, don't hide applications Y, Z, etc.
Micah Baldwin
@nialgiacomelli rules could be interesting ... I think about this use case: I am writing a document (working in excel, writing code, etc.) and as time passes, everything else fades (currently how app works). But what if I could set a rule that says, if I am in Pages for longer than X min, auto hide everything, and don't allow reappear for X min post idle.) I like the idea of having "focused moments" where I literally can't access other windows, websites, etc. (there are a few apps that do this--sort of--now, but are messy to use).
Gerbz
I use ⌘+H and ⌘+tab to hide/show windows all day long. Most people don't know about hiding windows. So much better than minimizing.