everyday mac tools

A distraction-free Mac for long writing sessions: the settings that matter

· 7 min read

Most of what pulls you out of a long writing session on a Mac is built in and can be switched off in System Settings: notifications, the Dock and menu bar, a desktop full of files and widgets, and autocorrect rewriting words as you type. A Focus handles the first, a few Desktop and Dock settings handle the next two, and the Keyboard pane handles the last. The whole setup takes about fifteen minutes, and the only real problem is switching it all off again afterwards, which the last section covers.

Start with a Focus that lets almost nothing through

Notifications are the biggest interruption, and a Focus is the tool macOS gives you for them.

  1. Open System Settings, then Focus, and click Add Focus.
  2. Choose Custom, name it Writing, and pick a color and icon.
  3. Under Allowed People, choose the few people who should still be able to reach you. For most sessions that is a partner, a child’s school, or nobody at all.
  4. Under Allowed Apps, leave the list empty, and switch off the option that lets time-sensitive notifications through.
  5. Back in the main Focus pane, decide whether Share across devices should be on. If it is, your iPhone goes quiet when the Mac does, which is usually what you want for a writing block.

Turn the Focus on from Control Center when you start. Better, let it turn itself on: open the Writing Focus, click Add Schedule, choose App, and pick the app you write in. From then on, opening that app starts the Focus and quitting it ends the Focus.

While you are in System Settings, open Notifications and switch off Badge application icon for the apps whose red counters catch your eye in the Dock. A Focus silences alerts, but a badge still sits there counting.

Hide the Dock, the menu bar and the desktop

With notifications gone, the next distraction is everything else on screen.

The Dock. In System Settings, Desktop and Dock, turn on Automatically hide and show the Dock. It slides away until you push the pointer to the edge of the screen. The default delay before it reappears can feel sluggish; Make the Dock appear instantly on a Mac removes it.

The menu bar. Search System Settings for “hide and show the menu bar”. Depending on your macOS version the option sits under Control Center, Menu Bar, or Desktop and Dock. Choosing Always hides the clock, the battery and every status icon until you move the pointer to the top.

Full screen. The simplest way to lose everything at once is to put the writing app in full screen with Control-Command-F, or by clicking the green button at the top left of the window. The app gets its own space, and the Dock and menu bar stay out of the way until you reach for them.

Widgets and desktop files. On recent versions, Desktop and Dock has a Widgets section with a Show Widgets option for the desktop; turn it off. A desktop covered in files is harder, because Finder always draws them. If you want a truly blank desktop while you work, this Terminal command hides every desktop icon:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

The files stay exactly where they are, in the Desktop folder in Finder. To bring the icons back:

defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop && killall Finder

What defaults write does, and how to undo one safely explains what these commands change.

Stop the Mac rewriting your sentences

Autocorrect is helpful in a text message and maddening in a manuscript, where it changes character names, dialect and deliberate spellings behind your back.

  1. Open System Settings, then Keyboard.
  2. Under Text Input, click Edit next to your input source.
  3. Switch off Correct spelling automatically and Capitalize words automatically.
  4. Switch off Show inline predictive text if your version has it. The gray suggestions ahead of your cursor pull attention forward to words you have not chosen yet.
  5. Decide on Add period with double-space and Use smart quotes and dashes. For prose, smart quotes are usually worth keeping.

The red underline is a separate setting, controlled in each app. In most apps it is under Edit, Spelling and Grammar, Check Spelling While Typing. Turn off autocorrect, smart quotes and substitutions goes through the rest of the substitutions.

Quiet the sounds and the motion

  • Sounds. In System Settings, Sound, switch off Play user interface sound effects so emptying the Trash or a finished screenshot makes no noise, and lower the alert volume.
  • Motion. In System Settings, Accessibility, Display, turn on Reduce motion. Switching spaces becomes a fade rather than a slide, which matters if you move between the draft and your notes a lot.
  • Transparency. In the same pane, Reduce transparency makes the menu bar and sidebars solid, so the colors behind a window stop bleeding through.
  • The apps you drift to. Screen Time, in System Settings, can set App Limits on the apps you open by reflex when a sentence gets hard. Treat it as a speed bump, not a lock.

Make it one switch instead of fifteen

Every change above is good while you write and irritating the rest of the day. The Focus can switch itself on and off with your writing app, but hiding the Dock, turning off autocorrect and silencing sounds are not part of a Focus, so on their own they stay changed until you change them back.

The built-in way to bundle them is the Shortcuts app. A shortcut can start with the Set Focus action, then use Run Shell Script for settings that have a command, such as defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true; killall Dock for the Dock. You build a second shortcut to reverse it, and you keep both up to date yourself.

Mainspring does this without the scripting. It shows these kinds of settings as one-click power-ups (autocorrect and smart quotes off, silence UI sounds, instant Dock, reduce transparency, no window animations), and each one is snapshotted before it changes so it flips back in one click. Its Writer’s Focus and Declutter and Focus recipes apply a curated set together and revert it together. You can also build a scene from the power-ups you want and have it apply itself when an app opens, so launching your writing app brings the whole setup with it. It is $29 once for up to three Macs, with a free one-day trial. Keep the Focus for notifications either way.

Switch a Mac between work, focus and presentation setups covers the same idea for other parts of the day.

Questions

Will a Focus block phone calls on the Mac? It silences calls from anyone who is not on your Allowed People list. If you want a caller to get through, add them there.

Does hiding desktop icons move or delete my files? No. They stay in the Desktop folder, which you can still open in Finder. The command only stops Finder drawing them on the desktop itself.

Should I make a separate user account just for writing? Some people do, and it guarantees a clean slate, at the cost of signing in and out and keeping two sets of files straight. A Focus plus the settings above usually gets the same quiet with less friction.