PGari Glowee: Mac brightness with window spotlight

How to highlight the active window on a Mac when the screen is full

Short answer: Before installing anything to highlight the active window on a Mac, start with what macOS does unaided: it puts the active app's name in bold in the menu bar, and that is the whole of the built-in marking. Read Apple's option lists for app windows, Desktop & Dock and Accessibility → Display and there is no setting that dims, outlines or otherwise marks the windows behind the live one. Apps supply that. PGari Glowee's Spotlight dims everything except the window you are in, on every Mac screen, thrown with ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S. On a MacBook Pro with an XDR panel it can go further and make that one window brighter than its surroundings. What it will not do is mark the mouse pointer, show clicks or draw on the screen — if that is the search that brought you here, there is a section for it further down.

Glowee's Spotlight used to highlight the active window on a Mac: the window stays at normal brightness while the screen around it is turned down

Two different searches end up on this page

"Highlighter" is doing a lot of work as a word, and the tools barely overlap.

What you want to stand out	What actually does it
The window under your keyboard	PGari Glowee (Spotlight, Boost Area), HazeOver, Tinkle
The mouse pointer itself	macOS pointer settings; Presentify; Mouseposé
Each mouse click	The Screenshot options behind Shift-Command-5; Mouseposé; Presentify
The keys you press	Mouseposé
Freehand marks over the screen	Presentify

If you are in the first row, carry on. If you are in one of the others, skip to the pointer section — it names what does the job and Glowee is not on that list.

What macOS marks on its own, and how to find a window fast

Apple's guide states the basic signal plainly: only one app is active at a time, and its name, in bold, along with its menus, sits in the menu bar. Past that, macOS helps you locate a window rather than mark one.

Mission Control. Control-Up Arrow. Every open window is "arranged in a single layer so it's easy to spot the one you need."
Only this app's windows. Control-Down Arrow. If you turn on Group windows by application under Mission Control in Desktop & Dock settings, the same chord groups them by app.
Cycle inside an app. Command-` — Apple's phrasing is that the grave accent key switches between the windows of the app you are using.
Increase contrast. Found under System Settings → Accessibility → Display. It raises the contrast of items such as borders around buttons or boxes. Show window title icons, in the same place, puts each window's icon into its title bar, which Apple notes "can make it easier to distinguish among windows or tabs when you have several open."
Stage Manager. Under System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Desktop & Stage Manager. It keeps the current app front and centre.
Hide the rest. Option-Command-H keeps the front app and hides every other one.

Every one of those is about finding, arranging or hiding. None of them marks the live window while the others stay on screen. That is the gap window highlighters fill.

The three mechanisms an app can use

Turn the surroundings down. The window you are in is left alone and the rest is dimmed. HazeOver puts it as "automatically highlights the front window by dimming background windows." Glowee's Spotlight runs on the same principle.

Flash something when focus moves. Tinkle is "a macOS app that appends a visual effect at the focused window changes," and says it "helps you if you often lose sight of the focused window especially the window is switched by keyboard shortcuts." It supports multiple displays and needs macOS 13 Ventura or later.

Raise the window itself. This needs an XDR or EDR panel, and it is Boost Area's job. With Boost Area on Active Window, only the window you are in gets the extra light; the desktop and every other window stay exactly as they were. Run Spotlight alongside it and the live window rises while everything else steps back.

No app here draws an outline around the window. Glowee certainly does not — if a border is what you pictured, this is the wrong tool and it is better to say so now.

Using Glowee to highlight the active window on a Mac

Glowee is a sun in the menu bar and one menu.

Click the sun. Under Spotlight, take Soft or Strong, depending on how busy the screen is. You do not need to switch Glowee on first — choosing a level starts it if it was off.
From then on ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S throws Spotlight from anywhere, returning at the level you last used.
On an XDR or EDR display, pick Low, Medium or Max under Extra Brightness and the live window gets the extra light too. Spotlight will not work without a single window to aim at, so switching it on while Boost Area stands at Whole Screen pushes that setting over to Active Window.
⌃ ⌥ ⌘ G switches Glowee off entirely, Spotlight included, and switching it back on brings Spotlight back with it.

Click on a different window and the light goes with you. The window that gets it is the front window of the app you are using.

Feature	Effect on the window	Which displays
Spotlight: Off, Soft, Strong	Everything except the window you are in is dimmed	Any Mac display, built in or external
Boost Area: Active Window	The window you are in is lifted; the light moves when you click another	XDR and EDR panels only
Boost Area: Pinned	The light stays on one chosen window while you click around; windows dragged across it stay unlit	XDR and EDR panels only

Low, Medium and Max scale the display's gamma table by 1.20×, 1.38× and 1.50× respectively, inside whatever headroom the panel has left. A MacBook Air, and any display without an XDR panel, cannot be boosted — Spotlight works on them regardless. The terms page is blunt about the cost: running a display brighter uses more power and generates more heat, exactly as raising the built-in slider does. The MacBook Pro brightness guide goes into the reasons.

It goes into recordings and shared screens

Spotlight is drawn on the screen, so a screenshot or a screen recording takes it along like any window, and there is nothing to mask in the edit. Present to a client, teach a class, record a walkthrough for colleagues in another time zone, and they all see 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. More on that in Spotlight for screen recordings.

While you are sharing, macOS can hold the banners back too: System Settings → Notifications → when mirroring or sharing the display, which Apple suggests using "while you're giving a presentation."

Pointer tools, since Glowee is not one

Glowee draws no ring around the pointer, shows no clicks or keystrokes and has no annotation tools. These do:

macOS pointer settings. They live in System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Pointer. Set the pointer size, its outline and fill colours, and switch on Shake mouse pointer to locate, which briefly enlarges the pointer when you move it quickly.
macOS Screenshot. Shift-Command-5, then the Options pop-up menu. Apple notes the choices "vary based on whether you're taking a screenshot or a screen recording," and among them are showing the mouse pointer or the clicks.
Presentify. Its own description: "Annotate your screen, highlight your cursor, and spotlight or zoom in on key areas."
Mouseposé. By its maker's account, "when activated, it dims the screen and shines a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer," and it can also highlight mouse clicks and make keystrokes visible.

Each description above is the maker's own wording from its own site.

Questions about highlighting the active window on a Mac

Which apps mark out the window that is in focus?

Several. HazeOver and Glowee's Spotlight dim the background windows; Tinkle flashes an effect when the focused window changes; and on an XDR panel Glowee can make the focused window brighter than the rest.

Would an outline be better than dimming the background?

Glowee only does the second, plus brightening on XDR. It draws no border at all. The advantage of dimming is that it is captured in recordings and shared screens, so your audience sees the same emphasis you do.

How do I highlight the pointer instead?

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

How do I get every window on screen at once?

Control-Up Arrow for Mission Control across everything, Control-Down Arrow for just the front app's windows.

Single monitor or several?

Every display gets Spotlight, whether it is built in or plugged in. The extra brightness needs EDR-capable displays, and every connected EDR display is lifted at the same time. HazeOver's site, for comparison, offers to "see which screen is active, or highlight windows on each monitor."

Is this the same Spotlight as the one built into macOS?

No. Apple's Spotlight is the Mac's search — Command-Space bar. This Spotlight is a dimming feature that happens to share the name, and its chord is ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ S.

Can I try it first?

Yes. It runs fully for seven days with no account and no card. When the week ends it is a one-off purchase — one Mac, or three Macs on one key, and 30 days in which to ask for the money back.

See what it looks like on your Mac

PGari Glowee occupies the menu bar and under 2 MB of disk, on macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon and Intel. It installs no kernel extension and leaves no helper running in the background; quit it and the display is back to normal at once. Related: dimming inactive windows on a Mac and keeping one window in focus.

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