PGari Glowee: Mac brightness with window spotlight

Searching for an ADHD focus app on the Mac? Read what this one is

Short answer: If an ADHD focus app is what brought you here, the useful thing I can give you is a clear boundary. PGari Glowee is a tool for the screen and nothing beyond it. Its Spotlight feature dims everything on the display except the window you are working in, on any Mac, and one chord — ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S — puts it on and takes it off. That is the sum total of what it contributes. It blocks nothing, times nothing, plans nothing and silences nothing, and it makes no claim about ADHD, about symptoms or about treatment of any kind. If a busy screen is genuinely part of what pulls you away, Glowee turns the busy part down; and macOS already ships with a long list of settings, all of them free and all listed below with their menu paths, that quieten considerably more than one app can.

A Mac screen with one window at normal brightness and everything else dimmed — the only thing this ADHD focus app page claims Glowee does

Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here should influence a decision that belongs with you and a clinician.

Six categories hide behind that one search

Search for an ADHD focus app and the results mix up at least six kinds of software solving six different problems. Sorting them is most of the work. Each description below is quoted from the maker's own site. The last row is mine to add: window dimmers do not appear in the search data for this term at all, and it is the row Glowee belongs to.

What the problem is	One app in that category	The maker's own wording
You keep opening the wrong thing	Freedom	"App, Website & Internet Blocker"
You cannot tell how long you have been at it	Forest	"A mindful focus timer"
You work better with someone else present	Focusmate	"Virtual body doubling for getting anything done"
The day needs to be visible, not remembered	Tiimo	"Visual Planner for Every Neurotype"
The list itself has become the problem	Todoist	"A To-Do List to Organize Your Work & Life"
One task is too big to start	Goblin Tools	"a collection of small, simple, single-task tools, mostly designed to help neurodivergent people with tasks they find overwhelming or difficult"
The screen itself is too loud	HazeOver	"automatically highlights the front window by dimming background windows"

Glowee sits in the bottom row and nowhere else, so calling it an ADHD focus app stretches the term further than it will honestly go. Which row is worth your money depends entirely on what actually gets in your way, and a page selling one app is the last place that question should be settled.

The screen itself: what macOS can already quieten

Put the diagnosis aside for a moment and look purely at the display. While you work in one window, all of the following move, blink, count or sit there being colourful. Every one has a switch built into macOS. The paths are from Apple's New Zealand Mac user guide as it stood in September 2026; older versions of macOS place a few of them elsewhere.

What is competing	The macOS setting	Where it lives
Notification banners	A Focus, such as Do Not Disturb	Control Centre → Focus. For Do Not Disturb, Option-click the date and time in the menu bar
One app that notifies constantly	Allow notifications (off)	System Settings → Notifications → Application Notifications
Red count badges on Dock icons	Badge application icon (off)	System Settings → Notifications → Application Notifications
Notification sounds	Play sound for notification (off)	System Settings → Notifications → Application Notifications
The Dock, bouncing icons, suggested apps	Automatically hide and show the Dock; Animate opening applications (off); Show suggested and recent apps in Dock (off)	System Settings → Desktop & Dock
The menu bar	Automatically hide and show the menu bar	System Settings → Menu Bar
Files strewn across the desktop	Show Items: On Desktop (off)	System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Desktop & Stage Manager
Desktop widgets	Show Widgets: On Desktop (off)	System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Widgets
Interface animation	Reduce motion	System Settings → Accessibility → Motion
GIFs playing in Messages and Safari	Auto-play animated images (off)	Same panel as Reduce motion
The blinking text cursor	Prefer non-blinking cursor	Same panel as Reduce motion
See-through backgrounds	Reduce transparency	System Settings → Accessibility → Display
Everything wrapped around a web article	Safari Reader	Smart Search field → Show Reader

Three of those deserve a sentence more.

A Focus will start itself if you let it. Inside System Settings → Focus, Set a Schedule will "automatically turn on a Focus at a set time or location, or while using a certain app". Nothing to remember and nothing to click. Allowed People and Allowed Apps keep the handful of interruptions that genuinely matter.

Full screen removes everything else outright. Green button, top-left of the window. Apple's own claim for it is that you "work without desktop distractions", and in full screen the menu bar and the Dock only appear when you push the pointer at them.

Hiding beats closing. Option-Command-H leaves the app you are in on screen and tucks all the others away — nothing shuts, nothing is lost. Stage Manager does something similar all the time: it keeps the current app "front and centre" and parks your recent apps down the left-hand side.

Where an ADHD focus app like this one actually fits

Both full screen and Option-Command-H work by removing the other windows. For a great many tasks that is no use at all. Writing from a source, building against documentation, copying details out of an email into a form — each needs two or three windows in view, only one of which is the one you are in at any given second.

That is the whole of the case for Spotlight. Every window stays where you put it, and everything except the current one is turned down.

Three positions: Off, Soft, Strong. Choose by how busy the screen is; there is no wrong answer to discover.
It tracks your clicks. Click into another window and the light is already there.
One chord. ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S from inside any app, returning at the level you last used.
No two-step setup. Picking Soft or Strong will start Glowee for you if it was not running. And if you switch Glowee off with ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ G, Spotlight goes with it and comes back when you switch it on again.
Any Mac. This is plain dimming, so a MacBook Air or an ordinary external monitor works as well as anything else.
Nothing to configure. A sun in the menu bar with one menu under it. No settings window exists to get lost in.

On a MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR display, or another EDR display, Glowee can also lift the brightness of just the window you are in, so the current window climbs while the rest steps back. That half needs an XDR or EDR panel and will do nothing on a MacBook Air. Running a display brighter also uses more power and makes more heat, exactly as raising the built-in slider does.

One practical warning before a video call: Spotlight is drawn on the screen, so a shared screen or a recording carries it. Everyone in the call sees the dimming too. Hit ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S before you join if you would rather keep it to yourself.

What Glowee is not

Not a blocker. It will not keep you off a website or out of an app.
Not a notification manager; a Focus handles that job.
Not a timer, a planner or a task list.
Not a medical device, not a therapy and not an aid for ADHD. No claim of that sort is made anywhere on this page or on the product.

Straight answers to the common questions

But do ADHD apps actually work?

That question is outside what this page can honestly answer, and Glowee claims nothing about ADHD. What can be described is purely mechanical — with Spotlight on, everything except your current window is dimmed. Whether a calmer screen helps you is something the free trial will tell you faster than any sales copy.

Is my problem distractions, time blindness or starting things?

Only you and the people you work with can answer that, but the answer decides which row of the first table you want. Glowee is relevant to exactly one of those three, and only to the part of it that lives on your screen.

Task paralysis, time management or phone distractions — which does this help with?

None of them directly. Planners and single-task tools are built for the first, timers for the second, blockers for the third. Glowee changes what your monitor pushes at you while you are already working.

Free option or paid tool?

Start with the free one. Everything in the macOS table above is included with your Mac and costs nothing, and for many people it is enough. Glowee runs free for 7 days with nothing locked and no account or card, then it is a one-off purchase — one Mac, or three Macs on one key — with a 30-day refund.

Does it remove the other windows or just dim them?

Dim. They stay open, clickable and exactly where you left them, at Soft or Strong. Use full screen or Option-Command-H if you want them properly gone.

Will it run on a MacBook Air?

Spotlight will, on any Mac display. The extra light is a different story — an Air has no EDR headroom for it to work in, and neither does an ordinary monitor.

Where do I start if I want the quietest possible Mac?

Work top to bottom through the macOS table: a Focus for the banners, badges and sounds off for the apps that do not matter, the Dock and desktop items hidden, motion reduced. Then decide whether the remaining windows still need turning down.

See for yourself during the trial

PGari Glowee is a menu bar app and nothing more: under 2 MB on disk, macOS 13 or later, the same binary for Apple silicon and Intel. It puts no kernel extensions and no background helpers into your system, and the instant you quit, the display is back exactly as it was. The same feature is covered from other angles in dimming inactive windows on a Mac, keeping one window in focus and marking out the active window.

Start the 7-day trial What Glowee does, in full