PGari Glowee: Mac brightness with window spotlight

How to highlight the active window on a Mac — the window, not the pointer

Short answer: to highlight the active window on a Mac, first note how little macOS itself does. Apple's guide states that "only one app at a time is active; the name of the app (in bold) and the app menus are shown in the menu bar" — a bold word at the top of the screen, and that is the whole signal. The Accessibility → Display settings table was read line by line for this page and contains nothing that dims or outlines the windows behind the front one. Apps fill that gap. PGari Glowee's Spotlight turns everything down except the window you are in, on any Mac display, switched with ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S; on a MacBook Pro with an XDR panel it can also make that one window brighter than its surroundings. Note the word window. Glowee does not ring the mouse pointer, show clicks or draw on the screen — the last section names the tools that do.

One window kept at full strength while the rest of the screen is dimmed, which is how Glowee can highlight the active window on a Mac

Window or pointer? Decide that first

"Highlighter" means at least five different things to the people typing it into a search box, and the tools barely overlap.

What should stand out What does it
The window currently under your cursor keys PGari Glowee — Spotlight and Boost Area; HazeOver; Tinkle
The mouse pointer The macOS pointer settings; Presentify; Mouseposé
Mouse clicks macOS Screenshot, via Shift-Command-5; Presentify; Mouseposé
Keystrokes Mouseposé
Drawing or annotating over the screen Presentify

What macOS gives you on its own

Apple's own tools are better at helping you find a window than at marking one. The paths below were read on Apple's Singapore Mac User Guide on 19 September 2026.

Each of those finds a window, rearranges one, or hides one. None of them dims or outlines the windows sitting behind the active one. That is precisely the gap a window highlighter fills.

Three ways an app can highlight the active window on a Mac

Turn the rest down. The window you are in stays as it is; everything else is dimmed. HazeOver puts it this way about itself: it "automatically highlights the front window by dimming background windows". Glowee's Spotlight works on the same principle.

Flash something when the focus moves. Tinkle is "a macOS app that appends a visual effect at the focused window changes" — the effect appears at the moment you switch windows, rather than persisting. It requires macOS 13 Ventura or later.

Make the window itself brighter. This one needs an XDR or EDR panel and is what Glowee's Boost Area does. Set to Active Window, only the window you are in is lifted; the desktop and every other window stay exactly where they were. Run Spotlight alongside it and the lit window climbs while the rest steps back.

Glowee draws no border and no outline around anything. If a coloured frame is the effect you are after, this is the wrong app.

How Glowee does it

Glowee is a sun up in the menu bar, with a single menu beneath it.

  1. Click the sun and pick Soft or Strong under Spotlight, according to how crowded the screen is. There is no need to start Glowee first — choosing a level starts it.
  2. After that, ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S works from inside any app, and Spotlight returns at the level you last used.
  3. On an XDR or EDR display the lit window also gains brightness: choose Low, Medium or Max under Extra Brightness. Spotlight has to have a window to light, so if Boost Area happens to be on Whole Screen when you switch Spotlight on, it is moved across to Active Window.
  4. ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ G switches Glowee off entirely, Spotlight with it, and back on again.

Click a different window and the light travels there. The lit window is the front window of the app you are using — Glowee follows your click rather than making the choice for you.

Feature Its effect on the window Which displays
Spotlight: Off, Soft, Strong Turns everything down except the window you are in Any Mac display at all, built in or external
Boost Area: Active Window Raises the brightness of the window you are in; the light moves when you click elsewhere XDR and EDR displays only
Boost Area: Pinned Holds the extra brightness on one chosen window; windows dragged across it stay unlit XDR and EDR displays only

The three brightness levels scale the display's gamma table by 1.20×, 1.38× and 1.50×, within the headroom the panel has spare. A MacBook Air and any other display without an XDR panel cannot be boosted at all, though Spotlight works on them perfectly well. As Glowee's terms put it, running a display brighter uses more power and generates more heat — the same as pushing the built-in slider up. The MacBook Pro brightness guide goes into the detail.

The highlight survives a recording

Spotlight is drawn on the screen, so screenshots and screen recordings capture it the way they capture any window, and there is nothing to mask afterwards. Whoever is watching a lesson, a demo or a tutorial sees which window you mean. The brightness boost behaves oppositely — it is left out of captures, so a recording made on a boosted screen looks perfectly ordinary. There is more on this in Spotlight for screen recordings.

If you are sharing a screen, macOS can also hold your notifications back: System Settings → Notifications → Show Notifications: when mirroring or sharing the display.

If it was the pointer you wanted highlighted

Glowee does none of this. No ring, no clicks, no keystrokes, no drawing tools. These do, each described in its maker's own words:

Questions people ask about highlighting windows on a Mac

Is there an app that marks which window is in focus?

Several. HazeOver and Glowee's Spotlight dim the background; Tinkle flashes an effect when the focused window changes; and on an XDR display Glowee can push the focused window brighter than everything else.

Border outline, or background dimming?

Glowee does the dimming, and on XDR panels the brightening. A border is not among its tricks. One practical difference: the dimming is captured in recordings and on a shared screen, so your audience sees it as well.

And if it is the pointer I want highlighted?

Not with this app. Go to System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Pointer for size and colour; for a ring or a travelling spotlight, Presentify and Mouseposé each offer one.

How can I see all the open windows of one app on my Mac?

Press Control-Down Arrow. Control-Up Arrow gives you Mission Control and every open window instead.

Single monitor, or several?

Spotlight will run on any display you have, built in or external. The extra brightness needs EDR-capable panels, and every connected one is lifted at the same time.

Is Glowee's Spotlight the same as the Mac's Spotlight?

No — the name is shared and nothing else. Apple's Spotlight is the search field that Command-Space bar opens. Glowee's is a dimming feature, and its chord is ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S.

Can I see it working before I pay?

Yes. Seven days with every feature open, no account and no card; then a one-off purchase — one Mac, or three Macs on one key — with a 30-day refund.

Try it on your own screen

PGari Glowee is one menu bar app of under 2 MB. It needs macOS 13 or later and runs as a single universal build on Apple silicon and on Intel. It puts nothing into the system — no kernel extension, no background helper — and the moment you quit it, the display is back where macOS had it. Nearby: dimming the inactive windows and focusing on one window.

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