Switch a Mac between work, focus and presentation setups in one step
· 6 min read
There is no single presentation switch in macOS. What there is: a Focus that silences notifications, one switch that stops banners appearing while you share a screen, a display sleep setting, and the Shortcuts app to fire the lot at once. Built together they cover almost everything people mean by presentation mode.
The half that gets forgotten is switching back. Plan that at the same time or you will spend a week wondering why nobody can reach you.
What a presentation setup actually has to change
Before automating anything, it helps to name the failures. In order of how badly they land in a room:
- A message notification appearing on a shared screen.
- The display sleeping mid-sentence.
- A cluttered Desktop, or widgets showing your calendar, when you switch apps.
- The Dock sliding in over the corner of a slide.
- Brightness set for a dark office, or Night Shift making a projector orange.
Not all of those need automation. The first two are settings you fix once.
The one switch most people miss
System Settings, Notifications, then scroll past the app list to three switches at the bottom. The one that matters here is Allow notifications when mirroring or sharing the display. Turn it off and macOS holds banners back whenever the screen is being mirrored to a projector, a television or a shared window.
Turn off Allow notifications when the screen is locked and when the display is sleeping while you are there, if the machine sits in a shared room.
This is the highest-value change on this page and it takes ten seconds. No Focus, no Shortcut, and it covers the case that actually embarrasses people.
A Focus that does the rest of the notification work
System Settings, Focus. macOS ships with Do Not Disturb and lets you add your own, so make one called Presenting.
- Click the plus button and name the Focus.
- Under People and Apps, allow only what genuinely must interrupt. For presenting, that is usually nothing.
- Turn on Share across devices if you want your iPhone silenced at the same time.
- Add a schedule if the context is predictable: a time, a location, or an app opening. A Focus that triggers when your presentation app opens is close to automatic.
- Add Focus Filters. A Dark Mode filter turns the appearance dark while the Focus is on and back afterwards, and calendar and mail filters limit which accounts show while you are in it.
Focus filters are the quiet feature here, because they revert on their own when the Focus ends. Anything you express as a filter is something you never have to undo.
Stop the display sleeping
System Settings, Lock Screen. Set Turn display off on power adapter when inactive to Never for the duration, and check the screen saver timing above it. Set both back afterwards: a laptop that never sleeps on mains power sits warm on a desk all night.
If you would rather not change a setting at all, Terminal has a one-off:
caffeinate -d -t 3600
That keeps the display awake for an hour and stops by itself. Control-C ends it early. Nothing to undo, which suits an occasional talk better than a settings change. Keeping a MacBook awake with the lid closed covers the related case of a laptop driving an external display with the lid shut.
While you are here, check your hot corners. A corner set to Lock Screen or Mission Control is easy to trigger with a stray pointer while you talk. Setting up hot corners without triggering them by accident covers making them require a modifier key.
Clearing the screen itself
The Desktop. In System Settings, Desktop and Dock, set Click wallpaper to reveal desktop to Only in Stage Manager, so a stray click does not sweep your windows aside and show whatever is on the Desktop. If you want the icons gone entirely for a session:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
killall Finder
Your files are all still there, they are simply not drawn. Undo it with defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop and another killall Finder. What defaults write does covers reading a value before you change it.
Widgets. Same settings pane, under Widgets, turn off showing them on the Desktop if yours display a calendar or a stock portfolio you would rather not project.
The Dock and menu bar. Option-Command-D hides and shows the Dock instantly. The menu bar has an auto-hide option in System Settings, Control Center.
Spaces. Underrated: press Control-Up, click the plus in Mission Control, and put only the app you are presenting on that desktop. Switch to it and nothing else exists, with nothing to undo after.
Wrapping it in one click
The Shortcuts app can hold the collection. Create a shortcut called Presenting with actions such as Set Focus, Set Volume, Turn Appearance On or Off, Quit App for anything chatty, and Run Shell Script for the defaults and caffeinate lines above.
In the shortcut’s details, turn on Pin in Menu Bar so it is one click away, and assign a keyboard shortcut. Then duplicate it, call the copy Back to Work, and reverse every action. That reverse shortcut is what makes the arrangement survive past the second week.
Be clear about the limit: Shortcuts cannot flip most System Settings switches directly. Focus, volume, appearance and running an app are covered; Dock size, notification sharing and lock screen timing are not, which is why the shell script action does the work.
The blunt version that always works
Make a second macOS user account called Presenting. Its own wallpaper, its own empty Dock, its own browser with no personal bookmarks or autofill, no mail accounts signed in. Turn on Fast User Switching in System Settings, Control Center, and switch to it from the menu bar before you go on.
It is heavier than a Focus and the only approach that removes the risk completely, because there is nothing personal in that account to reveal. If you present from the same Mac regularly, it is worth the twenty minutes.
Where a settings app fits
Everything above is free and takes an evening to assemble. If you would rather not maintain a pair of shortcuts and a shell script, Mainspring has scenes: a set of settings applied together and reverted together, which can apply themselves on triggers such as connecting a display, unplugging power, a time of day, or an app opening. Connecting a projector and having the Mac quiet itself is the case it was built for. It is $29 once for up to three Macs, with a free day to try it, and it changes nothing it cannot undo.
Questions
Does a Focus stop everything appearing on screen? It stops notification banners and sounds. It does not stop an open app from showing new messages inside its own window, or a badge count changing in the Dock. If the chat app is on screen, quit it rather than trusting the Focus.
Will Do Not Disturb do on its own? For a short call, usually. For a projector, add the mirroring switch in the Notifications pane: it catches things a Focus does not, including alerts allowed to break through.
What about my browser? Tab titles, the bookmarks bar and autofill suggestions are the usual leaks. A separate browser profile, or a private window with the bookmarks bar hidden, solves it faster than any system setting.
How do I make sure everything went back afterwards?
Build the reverse shortcut on the same day as the forward one and run it once to check. Settings changed by hand are the ones that stay changed, so prefer Focus filters and one-off commands like caffeinate for anything you need only for an hour.