Present only the windows you choose. darkfield puts the windows you pick onto a clean 16:9 canvas over your desktop wallpaper. You share that canvas in Zoom, Meet or Teams, or show it full-screen on a projector. Notifications, desktop icons and every other window stay off it, and an audience pointer shows where you're pointing.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lockyc/darkfield/main/install.sh | bashNeeds macOS 14 or later. The installer downloads the latest release, checks that it is signed and
notarized, installs /Applications/darkfield.app and launches it. darkfield then updates itself:
it checks daily, and Check for Updates… in its panel checks now.
Allow darkfield in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording; until you do, its panel says so and has a button that opens the setting. darkfield lives in the menu bar, with no Dock icon. Opening it again from Spotlight or Finder brings back the preview.
The first time you turn on the camera Preview, allow darkfield to use the camera. Darkfield Camera is a system extension: allow it once in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Camera Extensions; the panel has a button that opens it. A video app that was already open when you allowed it, or when darkfield updated, lists Darkfield Camera only after you quit and reopen it.
- Share a window by pressing ⇧⌘1 over it, or with Add Window… in the panel; press ⇧⌘1 again to stop. A shared window keeps an amber ring around it while it's shared.
- Show a window unscaled by pressing ⇧⌘2 over it: darkfield resizes it to the canvas inside its margin, so the audience sees it pixel for pixel. The first press asks for Accessibility access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
- Shared windows stack on the canvas, each scaled to fill it, in the same order as on your screen: the shared window you bring to the front is the one the audience sees.
- In a call, share the ▶ Darkfield window from Zoom, Meet or Teams. It sits off screen at
the canvas's full 1920×1080. You watch a small preview that floats above your windows on every
Space and never appears in a share. With more than one display it opens by itself, and sharing
a window brings it back; with one display it opens only from Show Preview Window. Its close
button hides it. A picker that selects a window by clicking it (Meet in
cooee) has ▶ Darkfield shown centred on your main display
while it is open; another app can do the same by posting the distributed notifications
com.lockyc.darkfield.pickerWillOpenandcom.lockyc.darkfield.pickerDidClose, opening its picker once darkfield answers withcom.lockyc.darkfield.pickerReady. - On a projector, set your displays to extended (not mirrored), then choose Present to → Projector in the panel. The canvas fills the projector, and your mouse stays on your own screen.
- The audience pointer is your cursor on the canvas, with an amber halo behind it so viewers find it. The halo fades after 10 seconds of stillness; shake the mouse to enlarge it, and clicks ripple. Turn it off in the panel, or give it a shortcut in Settings.
- Darkfield Camera shows you to any video app — Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, a browser call — from any camera you choose, with your background blurred and the shot framed to keep you in view, easing after you like Center Stage. Pick Darkfield Camera as the app's camera. Blur and Framing each switch on or off, with a strength and a Wide–Tight setting. The camera runs only while an app is using Darkfield Camera or the panel's Preview is on, and Preview turns off when the panel closes. Choose a Camera and, for when it's unplugged, a second one; with neither connected the call sees a dark frame, never a camera you didn't choose.
- The panel (the menu-bar icon) has two columns. The left holds the live canvas preview, the shared windows (✕ removes one), Present to, the margin and the pointer toggle; the right holds the camera: its preview (Mirror preview flips only your view of it), the camera choice, Blur and Framing.
- Settings — the share, fit and pointer shortcuts, the halo's fade time, and the wallpaper behind the canvas: the primary display's, another display's, or an image you choose.
In use, 0.x. Planned next: recording, the canvas as a camera, and cropping. The full list:
docs/FOLLOWUPS.md.
Needs Xcode's Swift 6 toolchain and just.
git clone https://github.com/lockyc/darkfield && cd darkfield
just test # unit tests
just gate # installer lint, build, tests
just install # build, notarize, install to /Applications and launchArchitecture, conventions and the release process: CLAUDE.md.
MIT — see LICENSE.