Hush

Silences your Mac while you share your screen. A menubar app built on Stacks — stx for the UI, Craft for the native runtime.

Features

• 🎯 Detection that means something — matches the sharing indicator a conferencing app shows while a share is live, not the mere presence of the app
• 🔕 Automatic Focus — turns Do Not Disturb on when you start presenting, off when you stop
• 🌊 No flapping — transitions are debounced in both directions, so a sharing toolbar that rebuilds mid-meeting doesn't unsilence your Mac
• 🤝 Leaves your Focus alone — never turns off a Focus it didn't turn on
• 📊 Usage statistics — sessions, total quiet time, average session length
• 🚀 Launch at login — optional, and reconciled with what you set in System Settings
• 🔒 Local only — nothing leaves your Mac

How detection works

macOS offers no "is my screen being captured?" API, so Hush combines four independent signals through Craft:

The two window-level signals match the floating control an app shows only while sharing. "Zoom is running" describes most of a working day, and acting on it would silence notifications permanently.

Setup

macOS reserves direct Focus control for Apple-entitled clients — Control Center and Shortcuts hold the entitlement; third-party apps cannot. The one sanctioned path is to let Shortcuts perform the change, so Hush needs two shortcuts, created once:

1. Open Shortcuts and create a shortcut named Hush Focus On
2. Add the Set Focus action, set to turn Do Not Disturb on
3. Create a second shortcut named Hush Focus Off that turns it off

Hush checks for both at launch and tells you if either is missing, rather than failing at the moment a meeting starts. You can point it at different names in ~/Library/Application Support/Hush/preferences.json.

Requirements

• macOS 13.0 or later
• Bun 1.2 or later (for development)

Development

bun install
bun run dev        # build and launch, with Craft's output in your terminal
bun run test
bun run build      # dist/Hush.app
bun run package    # dist/Hush.app + dist/Hush-<version>.dmg

The build resolves the Craft runtime from pantry, or from CRAFT_BIN when you are working against a local Craft build:

CRAFT_BIN=~/Code/Tools/craft/packages/zig/zig-out/bin/craft bun run package

Architecture

src/core/       platform-free: the decision engine, preferences, statistics
src/runtime/    the controller wiring detection → policy → Focus, and storage
src/client/     binds the controller to the popover
src/app.stx     the UI
scripts/        build and dev drivers

src/core has no imports outside itself, which is why the policy is covered by tests that need neither a window nor a Mac.

Releasing

bun run release:patch   # or release:minor / release:major

bumpx bumps the version, commits, tags and pushes. The tag triggers the release workflow, which produces two artifacts from the same build:

• Direct download — hardened-runtime, Developer ID signed, notarized and stapled, published as a GitHub release with generated notes and a checksums manifest through the pantry action.
• Mac App Store — sandboxed, distribution signed, wrapped in a .pkg by scripts/package-appstore.sh and uploaded to App Store Connect.

Both steps are conditional on their secrets. Without them the release still completes as an unsigned direct download and says so, rather than failing.

Secrets

Certificates and profiles are base64-encoded.

Why the two builds differ

They are not the same binary signed twice. The store requires the App Sandbox, and the sandbox forbids spawning /usr/bin/shortcuts — the mechanism the direct build uses to set Focus. Craft detects the sandbox and switches to shortcuts://run-shortcut, which LaunchServices permits. The entitlements are separate documents for the same reason.

The store also requires CFBundleExecutable to be a Mach-O image, so Craft is the bundle's executable and reads Resources/craft.json beside it. There is no launcher script. CI asserts this shape on every push.

Known limitations under the sandbox

• Shortcuts cannot be enumerated, so Hush cannot verify the Focus shortcuts exist. It reports "unknown" and stays quiet rather than prompting someone who has already done the setup.
• Running a shortcut by URL is fire-and-forget: macOS confirms the request reached Shortcuts, never that the shortcut ran.