Ghosted - Pause media or lock your screen when you step away
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Ghosted is an “away mode” for your Mac. It uses on-device presence detection to pause media or lock your screen when you leave, then resumes when you return. No cloud, no accounts, no tracking. Just automatic control of your workspace without breaking focus.
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@calvin_thurman cool idea! Did you try relying on other sensors, user activity? Like mic, typing, touchbar, etc.?
@dominik_bartosik Yeah I looked at that early on.
Typing and mouse activity are solid signals, but they miss the exact moments I cared about. You can be sitting there not touching anything while watching something or reading, and most tools would think you’re away.
Mic felt a bit too invasive for what this is, and I wanted to keep the privacy story really clean.
Camera gave me the most reliable “are you actually there” signal, and since it’s all on-device with the system indicator, it felt like the right tradeoff. I may layer in activity signals later, but more as a complement than the core.
@calvin_thurman got it ;). For me personally, local run sound processing would be more or less invasive than cam, but this could be just me :D.
@dominik_bartosik Yeah that’s totally fair. I think a lot of it comes down to what feels more intuitive to each person privacy-wise.
For me, the camera felt more transparent because macOS already exposes it with the hardware light and permission prompts, so there’s a very obvious “it’s active right now” signal. Audio processing felt a little more ambiguous for the kind of trust experience I wanted to build around it, even if technically it stays local.
I also found camera presence detection gave cleaner intent detection than ambient sound. Someone can have music, a TV, a conversation, or background noise going while being completely away from the machine.
That said, I do think combining lightweight local signals eventually could make the system smarter overall. I just wanted the first version to stay dead simple and predictable.
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@calvin_thurman The on-device approach is a smart differentiator—a lot of people don't realize how much data leaves their machine with cloud-based presence detection. One thing I'd be curious about: how does Ghosted handle false positives when you're still at your desk but just leaning back or looking away briefly? That seems like it could get annoying fast.
@osakasaul That’s a good callout, I thought about that early because it can get annoying fast if it’s too aggressive.
A couple things help with that:
There’s a delay before anything triggers, so it’s not reacting instantly
You can choose different sensitivity presets or set your own timer
Pro adds a grace period so quick movements or brief looks away don’t trigger anything
Goal was to make it feel predictable, not jumpy. If it ever feels off, that’s something I’d keep tuning based on feedback like this.
I still do it manually most of the time 😅
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@othman_katim Same here 😂
@othman_katim That’s honestly most people at first
Ghosted is really for that moment where you don’t even think about it anymore. You just stand up and everything handles itself.
If you’re already used to doing it manually, it might not feel necessary right away. But if you leave your desk a lot during the day, that’s where it starts to click.
If you try it, I’d be curious if it replaces that habit or if you end up going back to manual.
Congrats on the launch! The on-device angle is what gets me, most tools like this quietly phone home and you'd never know. Does Ghosted work reliably in different lighting conditions or does it struggle with low light detection?
@vishal7017 Appreciate that, the on-device piece was a big priority for me.
Lighting was something I tested a lot. It works well in normal indoor lighting and even dim setups like a lamp or monitor light. In really low light it can get less confident, so that’s where the delay and timers help prevent it from triggering too aggressively.
I’m also continuing to tune that over time. If you end up trying it in your setup, I’d be curious how it performs for you.
clean execution tbh
curious are people actually sticking with it after install
or mostly trying once and dropping?
@shaikh_sadique3 Appreciate that
Still early so I’m watching that closely. What I’m seeing so far is there are two types of users:
People who try it once and move on
People who actually need it and then just leave it on
The second group is what I’m optimizing for. Once it fits into your workflow, it kind of disappears and just does its thing.
Right now I’m focused on tightening that first experience so more people land in that second bucket.
This is the product i have been looking for!It is just a pity that it is only avaliable on Mac.