Ally macOS app gets native full screen mode support

Long periods of unbroken concentration, that most of us require to achieve the deep focus that leads to “deep work,” are increasingly challenging to come by.

We know our best work comes from focus, but it can be challenging to tailor our digital workspaces to minimize distractions. Even on macOS, an operating system built for the desktop/laptop format, and so tailored toward productivity, work, and creation, they’re, at least in some ways, intentionally designed to divert our attention away from whatever we’re trying to do, such as for alerts and notifications. There’s also a row of colorful icons tempting us to stray from our intended focus.

macOS’s full-screen mode helps with focus and concentration, thereby improving our ability to achieve the flow state many of us need to do our best work. It simply minimizes distracting visual clutter by devoting the entire screen to a single app. This is an app experience that’s default behavior on Windows, but not macOS. Both modes have their uses and benefits, so it doesn’t really make sense to frame it as a “right or wrong” debate.

But, for deep work, work that requires prolonged intense focus to be productive, many of us benefit from minimal distraction, and things like macOS’s full-screen mode help a lot by massively trimming distracting and potentially overwhelming visual noise. For anyone closer to the challenging end of the attention spectrum, the “multi-task mode” that macOS encourages by default can actually be a sneaky productivity killer. It can feel like we’re getting a lot done, but we’re really shuffling around windows and never really delving deep enough into any particular thing to solve a complex problem, come up with a great new idea, or uncover important nuance in a data set.

Now Ally supports full-screen mode so you can laser focus on whatever doc you’re creating, web clipping you’re reading, or local AI chat you’re having.

To get started, download the latest version of the Ally AI app from the macOS app store.

With the Ally app running, press the key combination fn + f or click the green circle icon in the upper left-hand corner of the app.

To exit full screen mode, you can press esc, fn + f again, or click the green circle icon that appears when you hover the upper left-hand corner of the app while in full screen mode.

You can also arrange the Ally app side by side with other apps, such as a web browser or PDF viewer, by clicking and holding the green circle icon, then selecting one of the tile options to arrange the window.

Now you can focus better with fewer visual distractions competing for your attention.

I’ll continue looking for new ways to leverage Apple’s ecosystem to make productivity easier with Ally. If you have an idea, let me know or submit as a feature request and I’ll add it to the community-driven roadmap.