I’ve finally found an app that works well for hiding everything on your Mac screen except what you’re working on.

Put your hands together for Isolator.

Well not everything, the Menu bar still remains in view, but you can hide the Desktop and the Dock.

I’m writing this post based on the 3.40beta version, which also allows you to specify, in the preferences, that Isolator be suspended when the Finder is the frontmost application.

Here’s one example of how Isolator works for me.

Nikon Capture NX 2 is an application which I use to edit the RAW / NEF files from my Nikon D90 camera (see some of my full-sized samples). When the application is launched, what’s shown is the various application toolbars. The problem is, I can still see my (extremely cluttered) desktop, or whatever windows that were open just before I switch to the NX2 application, and when I open an image for editing, my screen looks like this:

Messy, huh?

Now, all I need to do is hit Shift + Cmd + I, and all the other windows and the Desktop is faded out, and I get a nice, black background. You can can configure the shortcut key as well as the color of the background. I really like what I see:

This is now a much better way to work!