Focus on an ultra-wide or multi-monitor desk
Why dimming one window beats locking the screen.
SqwarkSelf was built on a 49-inch, 32:9 screen. That’s where this problem showed up first: most ways of interrupting someone that work on a laptop fall apart on a desk this wide.
A screen like that is about 120 centimetres across. You don’t look at it; you look at part of it, and the part moves all day.
A full-screen block is a sledgehammer
On a laptop, a full-screen block covers one thing, because one thing is all that fits. On a big desk it covers the document you’re writing, the reference next to it, the music, and the call you’re on, all to stop one tab. Locking the whole screen over one window punishes everything else on it, and teaches you to resent the tool.
A corner notification is invisible
The opposite fails too. A banner in the top corner of a 32:9 screen is a long way from wherever you’re looking, and it slides away before you see it.
SqwarkSelf’s first nudge made the same mistake a different way: a band right across the screen. The sentence sat at one end and the button at the other, and neither was where anyone was looking. The veil replaced it.
Put it where your eyes already are
The fix is to interrupt the thing you’re looking at, and nothing else. During a watch, when a window you ruled out comes to the front, SqwarkSelf dims just that window, blurred and tinted, and puts the card in its middle, with your own words and a ten-second ring. If you move or resize the window during the countdown, the veil follows it.
Everything else stays as it was: the document, the reference, the music, the call.
Why one window beats the whole screen
- You work across windows. On a wide desk the work is rarely one window. Dimming one leaves the others usable, so the nudge never costs you your place.
- It’s specific. The message is “this window”, not “you”. That’s easier to take, and easier to act on.
- It can’t be clicked past by accident. The veiled window swallows clicks, and ten seconds later it steps aside.
- It’s still yours to override. “This is work” is one click, and nothing is killed.
Several monitors
The veil is drawn over the window’s own frame, as macOS reports it, so it goes where the window is. The keyboard shortcut for starting a watch (⌃⌥W) opens its field on the screen of the window you’re working in, not on whichever screen happens to have the menu bar. To be straight about it: SqwarkSelf was built on one big screen, and that’s where it has been used most.
What it needs
The Accessibility permission, which is how it knows where a window is and what it’s called. Without it, the card still appears, floating in the middle of the screen, but there’s no veil.
