Introduction to Spirited Away
I found this utility a number of years ago and it’s become a favourite. Typically I am working with twenty or so programs running at any one time, and the screen can rapidly become cluttered. Because OSX uses “floating windows” for many addons, this clutter can reduce my productivity.
Spirited Away looks for programs that have not been used for period and then “hides” them to the Dock. Programs are not closed, or minimised (which is different on OSX), just hidden.
Using Spirited Away
Spirited Away is very focussed and the configuration are delightfully few.
Key areas that I have thought about:
Preferences
- Time to hide sets the delay before programs are hidden
- add LoginItem sets Spirited Away to automatically start at boot time. LoginItem refers to the option in the Account Preferences Pane that shows which programs automatically start
- Hot Key enables and disables Spirited Away
Drop Down List of Programs
You can selectively disable which programs are automatically hidden using this menu. Sometimes I change this according to what I am doing.
Inactivate Mode
You might want to suspend Spirited Away. You can “inactivate” from the drop down menu. Note: the eyes on the icon go closed to show you its inactive.
The Etherealmind View
I find that screen clutter can stop me from concentrating on the task I need to do. However, I don’t always want Mail, OmniFocus, Yojimbo or some other program that I use constantly to clutter up the screen. Spirited Away neatly tides them away without me having to think about it.
You can download Spirited Away for free from http://drikin.com/spiritedaway/.
My Menu bar looks like this
This is one of a series of articles that look at my Menu Bar after colleague asked what software I am using.
