work in the dark

Let’s face it, it’s pretty difficult to focus on your work when the Internet is more or less begging you to open up a new tab and look for anything that’s related to anything else but what you need to do. Luckily, specialized applications like work in the dark want to help you out by dimming those parts of the screen that can steal your attention.

Can be used on the go

Just so you don’t waste any precious time and start focusing on work as fast as possible, the application skips you the effort and time required to go through a setup process, being able to run from a USB flash drive as well. This means the computer you use it on is not affected in any way, because registries are not a dependency.
By default, the application minimizes to the system tray, and you have to bring up the settings panel to configure some initial options, or at least check out the hotkey that dims out a selective part of the screen. You’re free to set a different hotkey, but just make sure it’s not used by other applications or Windows itself.

Keep one or more windows visible

What work in the dark does is cover all of the screen with an opaque black layer, except for the active window, so nothing can distract you anymore. The settings menu also gives you the possibility to specify the transparency level, but sadly, the color of the veil cannot be changed.
These configurations can also be managed from the INI file in the source folder, where there’s still no option for color. Even if the veil covers the screen, you can still interact with elements that are behind. Moreover, making a different window active also keeps the last one over the veil, with no option to send it behind, unless triggering the main function off and on again.

On an ending note

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that work in the dark manages to live up to expectations, and is sure to help you focus on work a bit more, especially if you’re not that tempted to go behind the opaque veil. It’s a shame there’s no option to set color, and that you need to trigger the function again to send other windows behind, but it’s worth a try overall.