Mac Setup for Focus: Removing the Interruptions

Most focus advice is about willpower. Very little of it is, on a Mac. Your machine is configured to interrupt you by default: badges, banners, bouncing icons and a Dock full of everything you have ever opened. Turning that off is a settings problem with a settings solution.

Kill the interruptions in priority order

Not all notifications are equal. In order of how much they cost you:

1. Badges. The red numbers. They interrupt without a sound and you check them without deciding to. Turn them off per app in System Settings → Notifications. Start with Mail, Slack and Messages.
2. Banners. Set apps to None where you can, or at least to appear in Notification Centre only.
3. Bouncing Dock icons. An app demanding attention by jumping:

   defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool true && killall Dock
   
   # undo
   defaults delete com.apple.dock no-bouncing && killall Dock

4. Sounds. System Settings → Sound → Play user interface sound effects off, and per-app sounds off in Notifications.

A Focus mode that actually blocks things

Create a Deep Work focus in System Settings → Focus. Three details that most people miss:

• Turn off Allow time-sensitive notifications. Left on, apps decide what is urgent, and they always decide their thing is.
• Turn off Badges in the Focus's Options, so the numbers hide while it is on.
• Add Focus Filters: Safari can switch to a specific tab group, Mail to specific accounts, Calendar to a work calendar. This is the part that turns a Focus from a mute button into a mode.

Give it a schedule. A Focus you have to remember to turn on is one more decision at exactly the moment your attention is weakest.

Clear the visual field

Three changes remove almost everything that is not the work:

# auto-hide the Dock instantly, no delay
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool true
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0
killall Dock

# hide every desktop icon
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

The third is the menu bar: System Settings → Control Centre → Automatically hide and show the menu bar. Undo any of these by deleting the key or turning the setting back on.

One Space per project

Spaces are underused and they are the closest thing macOS has to a mode switch. Open Mission Control (F3), add a desktop with the plus button, and put one project's windows in it. Then assign apps to a Space permanently: right-click the app's Dock icon → Options → Assign To → This Desktop.

Two settings make this work better. Turn off Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use in Desktop & Dock, so a Space stays where you left it. And turn off When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows, so clicking an icon does not yank you into a different context.

Hot corners, and one to avoid

Hot corners are in System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners, and two of them are worth setting for focused work: Mission Control to see everything at once, and Start Screen Saver in a corner you can flick to when you step away, which locks the Mac if you have set a password requirement.

The one to avoid is Desktop in a corner you pass through often, because it will clear your screen mid-thought. If you trigger corners accidentally, hold a modifier key as part of the corner: click the dropdown and press Command or Option while choosing, and the corner only fires when that key is held.

The habit the settings cannot do

Close things. Not minimise, close. A minimised window is an open loop and macOS will helpfully restore it after every restart unless you tell it not to, in Desktop & Dock → Close windows when quitting an application. Starting a session with a clean screen and finishing it by closing everything is worth more than any of the settings above, and the settings make it easier to keep.