01 Free macOS app
Stage a spotless desktop. Then put it back.
One click clears the desk for a screenshot or a screen recording — icons gone, wallpaper covered, resolution set, your window placed just so. One click puts every last thing back exactly the way it was.
Requirements
macOS 14+ · universal, Apple Silicon & Intel · No network, no analytics, no account
Build from source
First launch
Swab is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized, so macOS holds it at the door. In Applications, right-click Swab → Open → Open. Once, and never again. MIT licensed.
02 Safety model
It writes down what it is about to change, before it changes it.
Every other feature is a convenience. This one is why the app is safe to run on a machine you care about.
Written down first
Before Swab flips a single setting it writes the current state to a JSON file on disk. Nothing is staged until that write has landed.
Restored verbatim
Restore writes the recorded values back exactly — including “there was no value here”, which is not the same thing as a default.
A crash can't strand you
Because the snapshot is on disk rather than in memory, a force-quit or a panic cannot leave your desktop in costume. The next launch offers to put it back.
Quitting restores too
Quit the app and it unwinds everything on the way out. Stage and Restore both sit in the menu-bar menu, so the window never has to be open.
03 Features
Every step is a checkbox, and every checkbox is reversible.
Turn on the ones you want. Swab runs them in order on stage and unwinds them in reverse on restore.
Hide desktop icons
Flips Finder’s CreateDesktop key and relaunches Finder — the only way it can be done
Clean backdrop
A click-through layer above the wallpaper; five presets, plus custom colors, gradients, and images
Set resolution
Per display, recording-friendly modes flagged, switched inside a display-configuration transaction
Place a window
Any app’s front window moved and sized through the Accessibility API, and remembered per app
Presets & hotkey
Name a whole staged configuration, then stage or restore it from anywhere
Countdown & timer
A pause before staging, and an optional duration after which Swab restores itself
Built-in capture
Screenshot or record from Swab while staged, with the cursor hidden and clicks optionally ringed
CLI
swab stage and swab restore, for scripting a docs build or a CI screenshot job
04 Limits
And what macOS will not let it do.
There is no API for turning Focus modes on, so Swab runs a Shortcuts shortcut you supply through the supported shortcuts CLI rather than shipping a toggle that lies. There is no supported way to tidy the menu bar either, so Swab leaves it alone. And hiding desktop icons restarts Finder — twice, once each way — because Finder only reads the preference at launch.
Two permissions, both optional and both asked for only at the moment they are needed: Accessibility for window placement, Screen Recording for the built-in capture. Decline either and everything else still works.
The name
Swab (v.) — to mop the deck of a ship.
The full feature list, the permissions detail, and the snapshot format are all on the app’s own site.
swab.shafer.llc05 Install
Clone it and run one script.
Free & open source · swab.shafer.llc · Source on GitHub
06 Next step
Need something built the same way?
Small, native, reversible, and shipped. Tell us what you’re making and we’ll come back with an approach and a timeline.