Everything else goes dark.
Press a hotkey. The window you're working in glides to the centre of the screen at full height, and the rest of macOS — wallpaper, menu bar, Dock, every other app — fades to black behind it. Press it again and everything is exactly where you left it.
⌥⌘F
macOS 15 or later · Apple silicon and Intel · one-time purchase
How it works
Works in every app
Foreground moves whatever window is focused — editor, browser, terminal, mail — through the system Accessibility API. There is nothing to install into your apps and nothing to configure per app.
Escape gets you out
Esc exits. If you live in Vim, switch on double-press so a single Esc still reaches the app underneath and only a deliberate double tap leaves foreground mode.
Tune the whole thing
Margins, padding, corner radius, how dark the backdrop goes, how long the animation takes, what a click on the backdrop does, and the shortcut itself.
Smooth, even when apps aren't
The animation runs on its own clock with every Accessibility call on a worker thread, so the backdrop never stutters waiting on an app that is slow to resize.
Details
- Native
- Written in Odin against AppKit directly. No Electron, no web view, no framework tax.
- Small
- A menu bar icon and a settings window. That is the entire interface.
- Offline
- No account, no telemetry, no network calls except checking for updates.
- Safe to quit
- If Foreground quits — or crashes — mid-session, your window's original frame is restored, on next launch if need be.
- Requirements
- macOS 15 or later, universal binary. Needs Accessibility permission to move windows; it asks on first launch.
- Full-screen windows
- Refused by design — they live in their own Space and cannot be repositioned.
One app, one price.
$5
A one-time purchase for 3 Macs you own. Free updates for version 1.x.
14-day trial, no card required · 30-day refunds, no questions asked