How Just a Pause works

The sensors are already in your AirPods

AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods Max 2, AirPods 3, AirPods 4 and AirPods 5 have an accelerometer and gyroscope. Apple added them for Spatial Audio, so sound can stay fixed in place while you move your head. Since macOS 14 Sonoma, apps can read that same head motion through Apple's Core Motion framework, with your permission.

Just a Pause uses those numbers, and only those numbers. It never turns on the camera and never reads what's on your screen. See which AirPods have head tracking.

Setup in five steps

1. Put on your AirPods. Wear AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods Max 2, AirPods 3, AirPods 4 or AirPods 5. One AirPod is enough.
2. Allow Motion & Fitness. macOS asks once so it can share your AirPods' head motion with the app.
3. Show it your screen. Look at each edge of your screen when asked. It covers every connected display.
4. Look away. Turn your head past the edge of your screen. The screen softly blurs.
5. Look back. The blur lifts the moment you face the screen again.

How it decides you looked away

During calibration you look at the left, right and bottom edges of your screen. Just a Pause remembers those head angles. From then on it checks, many times a second, whether you're facing inside that area. If you turn past an edge, the screen starts to blur. You can add up to 20° of extra room past the edges if you like to glance sideways without triggering it.

A few rules keep it out of your way:

• Never while you're working. If you're typing or using the mouse, you're clearly looking, so it won't blur.
• Stays centered. AirPods sensors drift slowly. When you move the pointer, Just a Pause knows where you're looking and corrects itself.
• Off during video calls. While any app is using your camera, it never blurs, so you can read notes during a call.
• Snooze. Turn it off from the menu bar for 15 minutes up to 2 hours.
• Sleep and lock. The blur clears when your screen locks, and Just a Pause recenters after your Mac wakes.
• Always in your control. Press ⌃⌥⌘R to recenter or Esc to clear the blur.

What happens to your screen

The blur is a window drawn by macOS on top of every display, with a strength you can set from 30% to 100%. Just a Pause doesn't capture, copy or analyze your screen, so it doesn't need Screen Recording permission. Read more about keeping your screen private.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't pause your music or video, lock your Mac or log anything. It only blurs the screen while you're turned away. When you leave your desk, lock your Mac as usual.

Where your data goes

Nowhere. Head motion is processed on your Mac and never leaves it. To know you're on a call, the app checks a system flag that says whether a camera is in use; it never opens the camera. It only goes online to activate your license and check for updates.