Monday, 2 March 2026<\/p>\n
Back in December I linked to<\/a> a sort-of stunt project from Tyler Hall called Alan.app<\/a>\u2009\u2014\u2009a simple Mac utility that draws a bold rectangle around the current active window. Alan.app lets you set the thickness and color of the frame. I used it for an hour or so before calling it quits. It really does solve the severe (and worsening) problem of being about to instantly identify the active window in recent versions of MacOS, but the crudeness of Alan.app\u2019s implementation makes it one of those cases where the cure is worse than the disease. Ultimately I\u2019d rather suffer from barely distinguishable active window state than look at Alan.app\u2019s crude active-window frame all day every day. What makes Alan.app interesting to me is its effectiveness as a protest app. The absurdity of Alan.app\u2019s crude solution highlights the absurdity of the underlying problem\u2009\u2014\u2009that anyone would even consider running Alan.app (or the fact that Hall was motivated to create and release it) shows just how bad recent MacOS\u2019s windowing UI is.<\/p>\n Turns out there exists an app that attempts to solve this problem in an elegant way that you might want to actually live with. It\u2019s called HazeOver<\/a>, and developer Maxim Ananov first released it a decade ago. It\u2019s in the Mac App Store for $5<\/a>, is included in the SetApp subscription service<\/a>, and has a free trial available<\/a> from the website.<\/p>\n What HazeOver does is highlight the active window by dimming all background windows. That\u2019s it. But it does this simple task with aplomb, and it makes a significant difference in the day-to-day usability of MacOS. Not just MacOS 26 Tahoe\u2009\u2014\u2009all recent versions of MacOS suffer from a design that makes it difficult to distinguish, instantly, the frontmost (a.k.a. key) window from background windows.1<\/a> Making all background windows a little dimmer makes a notable difference.<\/p>\n