Tidy windows for a call

Sharing your screen and don't want your email and chats on show? Tidy windows minimizes every window except the ones you'd present from, in one click — and puts them back afterwards.

Three ways to run it

• Browse all › Privacy — click Run on Tidy windows for a call.
• Menu bar — Tidy windows now under Utilities.
• Meeting Mode — the recipe runs it each time you apply it, alongside nine other screen-clearing power-ups. See every recipe.

It runs once each time; it isn't a setting that stays on.

What stays on screen

Windows from these apps are left alone:

• Browsers — Safari, Chrome, Arc, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi and Opera. That covers Google Slides, Google Meet and PDFs opened in a browser, too.
• Slides and documents — Keynote, Pages, Numbers, PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
• PDF viewers — Preview, Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat Reader, PDF Expert, Skim and PDFpen.
• Call apps — Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, FaceTime, Slack and Discord, so the call you're presenting from never vanishes.

Every other app's ordinary windows are minimized to the Dock. Full-screen windows, dialogs and floating panels are left where they are.

Bring the windows back

In the menu bar, Restore 5 windows — the number matches — un-minimizes the windows Mainspring tidied that are still minimized. The list is remembered even if you quit, so Restore still works later.

Windows are matched by app and title, so some can't be found: a window whose title has changed since — a document you renamed, say — a window with no title, or one whose app you've quit. Restore clears the list when it's done, so bring any of those back from the Dock yourself.

It needs Accessibility permission

Minimizing other apps' windows needs macOS's Accessibility permission. The first time, Mainspring shows the permission prompt and opens System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility. Turn on Mainspring, then run it again. Until you do, a banner explains what's needed and nothing is changed — that goes for recipes and scenes that include it, too.

Limits

• Apps that live only in the menu bar aren't touched, so a window from one of those stays on screen — as do dialogs, floating panels and full-screen windows from any app.
• Minimized windows still show in the Dock. Minimize windows into the app icon — already part of Meeting Mode — tucks them into their app's icon instead.