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TrillMark how-to

When your Mac goes quiet, TrillMark goes quiet too

TrillMark plugs into macOS Focus the native way — as a Focus filter. Add it to Do Not Disturb, Work, or a Focus of your own, and your per-app sounds and flashes pause with it. Nothing to remember on the way in or out.

Focus silences banners — but not all of them

Turn on a Focus and macOS holds most banners back. But that's rarely all of them: the apps and people you allow to break through keep posting — that's the point of allowing them — and TrillMark keeps doing its job for every banner it can see. During a strict Do Not Disturb there's usually nothing left to react to; in a Focus that lets your favorite apps through, TrillMark's sounds and flashes arrive with them.

Sometimes that's exactly right — an alert important enough to break your Focus deserves a sound you'll notice. When it isn't, macOS has a native way for an app to follow your Focus: a Focus filter. TrillMark ships one.

Add TrillMark to a Focus

  1. Open System Settings › Focus and pick a Focus — Do Not Disturb, Work, whichever should quiet TrillMark.
  2. Scroll to Focus Filters and click Add Filter, then pick TrillMark.
  3. Switch on Silence TrillMark sounds inside the filter and click Done. Adding the filter without this switch changes nothing — it's the switch that does the silencing.
  4. Repeat for each Focus that should quiet TrillMark. Filters are a per-Focus setting.

Good to know

TrillMark is launching soon

Add TrillMark to a Focus and it goes quiet with you — sounds and flashes pause, then come right back. Leave your email and I'll let you know the moment it's ready.

Questions about Focus & Do Not Disturb

Does TrillMark automatically respect Do Not Disturb?

Not by itself — macOS doesn't tell apps when a Focus starts unless you ask it to, and that ask is the Focus filter. Add TrillMark to the Focus once, switch on “Silence TrillMark sounds,” and from then on it's automatic: quiet when the Focus starts, back when it ends.

I added the filter but TrillMark still plays sounds. Why?

Open the filter and check the “Silence TrillMark sounds” switch inside it — adding the filter alone doesn't turn it on, and it's easy to miss. Filters are also per-Focus: adding one to Do Not Disturb doesn't cover your Work Focus. And on macOS 26.5 specifically, filters from non-Apple apps never activate — a macOS bug Apple fixed in 26.6.

Will I still see what I missed during a Focus?

Notifications silenced by the filter aren't added to TrillMark's Recent Alerts — it records an alert only when it actually cues you. Nothing is lost, though: macOS Notification Center still collects the banners themselves, so the catch-up list lives where it always has.

Do I need a Focus just to get some quiet?

No — TrillMark has a global mute hotkey and a timed snooze that resumes on its own, both also available from Shortcuts and Siri. The Focus filter is for people who already live by Focus modes and want TrillMark to follow along without one more thing to toggle.