Imagine an incredibly embarrassing text popping up on your screen while you’re giving an online presentation. Now imagine you never have to worry about this ever happening again. On Air Mode is a free Mac application that does one thing: It sets your Mac to Do Not Disturb mode whenever your microphone is active.
The idea is that your microphone being active means that you’re either talking to someone or recording something—two situations during which you’d rather not see notifications and get distracted. If you’re sharing your screen during a meeting, there’s no chance of anything unprofessional showing up on the screen. Sure, you could remember to enable Do Not Disturb mode on your Mac before starting a call, but let’s be honest: Sometimes, you’re going to forget.
To get started, simply install the application from the App Store and run it. The first time you run it you will be asked to install a Shortcut called “On Air Mode Shortcut”—On Air Mode requires this shortcut to work.
Do that and the application will run from the menu bar. You can test it by opening the Voice Memos app and recording something—you’ll see Do Not Disturb mode activate the second you start recording. Stop recording and Do Not Disturb mode turns off again.
It’s interesting to see an app developer using a Shortcut as part of their workflow. We’ve talked about Shortcuts that can automate tasks on your Mac and this is another example of that.
The application, by developer Nikita Varentsov, is free—and it’s private. “On Air Mode uses system hardware APIs to detect device activity without accessing any audio content,” the app’s description reads, “No recordings, no data collection, no cloud services—everything happens locally on your device.”
If you regularly find yourself distracted (or embarrassed) by notifications during meetings, give this app a try. No one wants a private text showing up on screen during a presentation.
