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Yellowlight

A menu bar app for Mac

One click.
Every window, out of the way.

Yellowlight sits in your menu bar as a small circle. Click it and everything on your desktop minimizes to the Dock. That's the whole app.

Download for Mac See how it works

Version 1.0 · macOS 13 or later · notarized by Apple · under 1 MB

Try it: click the circle in the menu bar. A mock desktop, not a screenshot.

How it works

  1. 1

    Click the circle.

    It's an outline until you point at it, then it fills in yellow. Click, and Yellowlight asks every app you have open to minimize its windows.

  2. 2

    Your desktop is clear.

    These are ordinary minimized windows, the same ones the yellow button in a window's corner makes. They sit in the Dock, not in some other place you have to remember.

  3. 3

    Carry on.

    Click a window in the Dock to bring it back, or switch apps the way you always do. Yellowlight doesn't keep a list and doesn't need to be told to put anything back.

Right-click the circle for the two things it has in a menu: Launch at Login and Quit. There is no Dock icon and no window of its own.

Why it asks for Accessibility

macOS keeps apps from touching each other's windows unless you say so. Minimizing a window you didn't open is exactly that, so the first time you launch Yellowlight, macOS asks you to switch it on under System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility.

Yellowlight uses that permission for one thing: asking other apps to minimize their windows. It doesn't read what's in them, and it doesn't take screenshots or log keystrokes. It also doesn't have anywhere to send data, since it never connects to the internet. The privacy page has the details.

You can turn the permission off at any time from the same settings pane. The icon will stay in the menu bar, and clicking it will take you back there.

Small on purpose

Does
Minimizes your windows
Doesn't
Restore them, group them, or remember them
Lives in
The menu bar. No Dock icon.
Account
None
Network
Never connects
Needs
macOS 13 or later, Accessibility permission
Download
313 KB, signed and notarized

Get Yellowlight

Unzip it, drag it to Applications, open it once and allow Accessibility.

Download for Mac