Mac setup for client calls: look professional in a minute

If you freelance or run a small studio, screen sharing has a risk employees do not have: the last client's work is on your Mac, and this client is looking at it. Here is a setup that keeps them separate without a lot of ceremony.

The specific risk of client work

Nobody minds seeing a messy desktop. They mind seeing another company's name. The exposures that matter are narrow and predictable:

• Desktop files named after other clients — mockups, contracts, invoices.
• The Dock's recent apps section, showing what you were working on ten minutes ago.
• A Finder window opening at the last folder you used, which is usually another project.
• Calendar widgets on the desktop showing appointments with other people.
• The Stage Manager strip, quietly rendering thumbnails of everything else you have open.

None of these require you to make a mistake. They are all just the default behaviour of a Mac being used for work.

Set these once

1. New Finder windows open at Home. Finder → Settings → General → New Finder windows show → your Home folder. So a stray Cmd-N shows a neutral folder instead of last week's project.
2. Turn off recent apps in the Dock. System Settings → Desktop & Dock.
3. Turn off click-to-reveal desktop, so a stray click cannot sweep your windows aside mid-call.

# new Finder windows open at your Home folder
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfHm"; killall Finder

Between calls

The per-meeting half should take one action, not ten, because back-to-back calls are exactly when a checklist gets skipped.

1. Hide desktop icons and widgets.
2. Auto-hide the Dock.
3. Turn on Do Not Disturb — macOS reserves this for you, no app can do it.
4. Quit the previous client's apps rather than minimising them. Minimised apps still appear in the Dock and Stage Manager.
5. Share a single window rather than your screen where the call allows it.

Look competent, not just careful

Two small things make a bigger impression than they should. Increase your display's text size or lower the resolution before sharing — what is comfortable on your monitor is unreadable to someone on a laptop, and squinting clients disengage. And stop your Mac sleeping if the call involves you talking over slides rather than typing, so the screen does not dim mid-sentence; the sleep settings for presenting covers that.

Then put everything back when the day ends. A permanently meeting-configured Mac is a slightly worse Mac to actually work on, which is why the undo matters as much as the setup.

Common questions

How do I stop clients seeing other clients' files?

Hide desktop icons, set new Finder windows to open at Home, and quit rather than minimise the previous client's apps before joining the call.

Should I use separate user accounts per client?

It is the most complete separation and it is genuinely worth it for long engagements under NDA. For most freelance work the setting changes above are enough.

What is the most commonly missed item?

The Dock's recent apps section. It sits at the end of the Dock and shows exactly what you were doing before the call.

Does hiding desktop icons hide them from me too?

Yes, while it is on. The files are untouched in your Desktop folder, and turning it back off restores them immediately.

Can I automate the whole routine?

The settings half can be applied and reversed as a group. Do Not Disturb has to be set by you, since macOS does not allow apps to control Focus.

Why one click matters here

Freelancers do this several times a day. A routine that takes a minute each time is a routine that gets abandoned in a busy week, and the busy week is when you are most likely to have three clients' work open at once. Make it one action each way — see Meeting Mode.