Isolator

Ben I LOVE Isolator. However, I use Dark menu and the icon being as it is is driving me nuts. any way that we can get a white Dark Menu icon?

Note that developer website link is wrong. Should be https://www.willmore.eu/software/isolator/

Is it somehow just me, or when you enlarge MacUpdate’s “View Larger” window, does it pop up just fine … but no larger that I can see.

This app works well on OS X Yosemite (10.10.2) despite not having been updated in years and offers useful options. Big thanks to the developer for making it free.

It works.

Stable and useful.

Just installed this, I'm on Mavericks (Mac OS 10.9.2), works just great! Entire screen (except for menubar) turns totally black, including even the desktop wallpaper. Very easy and simple to use. You can change the color from black to another solid color of your choice, if you want. The color can be total, or it can let the actual background leak through, and you can decide the strength of that leakage, that's your choice too. You can also decide the fade speed. I left that at the original setting, at nearly immediate. Whatever you want to focus on has to be selected first before you turn on Isolator. Isolator's icon appears only in the menubar. To turn on Isolator, you click its icon, then within its drop-down menu you click "on." When you're done, again click Isolator's icon, click "off" in its drop-down menu, then regular screen returns. That's it. If you want to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, you can use the hotkey of your choice to turn Isolator on and off from the keyboard. The icon showing in the menubar is optional, you can still access it through the hotkey. I see no bugs; it seems totally stable. This doesn't feel like it's a beta at all. I did have two questions I couldn't resolve. In Preferences, under the tab titled "Background windows," there's something called "Filter type" where you have the choice of: None, Blur, Bloom, Crystals, Desaturate. I tried them all but couldn't determine what these options actually did. So I left this at the original setting, None. There's also something called "Filter radius," which you can change along a continuum from small to large. Tried this out as well, didn't seem to do anything either. I left this alone at the original setting as well. There's nothing on the developer's website that explains these two options either.

Phew!! Still seems to work fine with Mavericks OS 10.9 ... clearing the visual clutter of other applications. Although the downloaded disk image claims to be a 4.9 beta, it contains the 4.76 beta ....

I have only recently started using this app, so ratings for stability should be taken with a grain of salt. But it does what it is supposed to very effectively. It stops me from being distracted by the web and allows me to get along with my work. It is very simple to use, and flexible - it is simple to add new web pages to block. I think this may be the most useful 'productivity improver' that I have installed! I am very excited by this!

Simple. Very helpful. Wonderful. Thank you. Easiest way to shut out the necessary clutter of other apps in order to concentrate on a single task .... 8-)

I love Isolator for its simplicity. Thank you!! A wish list item for me would be application exclusions.

The cleanest, simplest and least memory-hungry of the 'concentration' apps. But for some reason, since I upgraded to Lion, when the app is set to load as a startup item, it doesn't activate with the hotkey; I have to go and open it again, which is mildly annoying. Still, that minor issue, aside, this is a fantastic app.

Really nice app. Does what it says and does it well. Lots of options to adjust to your liking.

I've been blessed to find a few really great pieces of software lately. Isolator is one of them. It is useful to me because I run many applications concurrently and it can be difficult to keep up with which is the front app. I run 4 monitors which compounds the problem. Frequently I run 3-4 copies of 4D and I have modified the wrong code many times because of losing track of which is which. Isolator solves that perfectly. You can dim out the background apps so that you can see them, but also know they are not the front app. One recommendation I would make is to turn of the "Filters" which control the look of the background apps. Filters cause a significant slow-down with no real benefit. To make things even better, Isolator is Free! Can you beat that?!

This is a great tool, but I did have some troubles with it. I do not like a lot of things in my menu bar, so I switched this option off. I use a (very huge amount) lot of software at the same time, so I erased the keyboard shortcut so it could not interfere with some other app. ...and now I could not control the app anymore and had to quit it in Activity Monitor (clicking the app icon did not do anything). But it did help me to focus, works very well and the 'filters' to hide the desktop are great!

Perfectly simple, exponentially beneficial.

Excellent little utility!

I've used Isolator in the past to fill the gap when Menustrip was unavailable but now that Menustrip has been resurrected from the dead it does this and much more and much better. Yes, it's 10 bucks and this is free but I think it's worth it.

Does not work properly with TotalFinder

Fantastic Program. It does exactly what the author says it should. I've had no problems with the software.