NC #1116 Video on Making the Eclipse Video, Friends of Griffin, Vista for Images, ViewSonic Dual Displays, Security Bits
Sep 28, 2026 · 1 hr 37 min · 12 segments
Sep 28, 2026 · 1 hr 37 min · 12 segments
Allison SheridanHost
I found an app recently that solves a very specific problem of mine, but it turns out this app is not the one-trick pony that I thought it was when I first got it.
Every once in a while, when doing a screencast, I need to show a still shot of a graphic.
This week, I wanted to show a PNG of a typical Mac keyboard and point to the two function keys during the video for brightness and the three for volume control.
Now it's easy enough to open the graphic in the default preview app, but the graphic is surrounded by the Windows Chrome.
This includes elements such as the title bar, window borders, scroll bars, the maximize, minimize, and close buttons.
All of these distractions destroy the illusion that you're just bringing a keyboard onto the screen.
After more than a decade of fighting this problem, I went on a hunt to solve it, and I almost instantly found the perfect tool for the job.
It's called Vista, and it's available in the Mac App Store for the grand sum of free.
When I open images in Vista, all I get is the image floating in space with nothing around it, just like I wanted.
The only problem I saw with Vista is that the new, finely standardized rounded corner radius of macOS GoldenGate is smaller than the radius of the Magic Keyboard, so I see a tiny little bit of leftover window on the corners.
Now, while this solved the problem I had, I've since discovered that Vista does a lot more.
If you hover the cursor over the top area of the Vista window, it reveals a few more features.
It doesn't add a toolbar, but rather overlays the tools on top of the image.
It's kind of messy looking that way, but it stays true to the non-toolbar promise.
On the image, you can see the stoplight buttons and the image name over on the left and a set of tools on the right.
Have you ever been in a folder of images and you wanted to just flip through them? You can use Quick Look to do this by hitting the space bar on one of them and then using the up-down arrows to view each one.
With Preview, you can do things with the image, but you can't flip through them unless you open all of the images at once and you're flipping through them in that little sidebar thumbnail view.
You can open one image at Vista, and then using the arrow keys, you can flip through them with ease.
Okay, now that we understand this one feature, the tools are going to make a little more sense.
Starting from right to left, we have a pin button that keeps the selected image on screen, hovering above all the others as you might expect.
Interestingly, as you flip to another image using the arrow keys, the image does change, and the new image is now pinned to the screen above other windows.
I found an app recently that solves a very specific problem of mine, but it turns out this app is not the one-trick pony that I thought it was when I first got it.
Every once in a while, when doing a screencast, I need to show a still shot of a graphic.
This week, I wanted to show a PNG of a typical Mac keyboard and point to the two function keys during the video for brightness and the three for volume control.
Now it's easy enough to open the graphic in the default preview app, but the graphic is surrounded by the Windows Chrome.
This includes elements such as the title bar, window borders, scroll bars, the maximize, minimize, and close buttons.
All of these distractions destroy the illusion that you're just bringing a keyboard onto the screen.
After more than a decade of fighting this problem, I went on a hunt to solve it, and I almost instantly found the perfect tool for the job.
It's called Vista, and it's available in the Mac App Store for the grand sum of free.
When I open images in Vista, all I get is the image floating in space with nothing around it, just like I wanted.
The only problem I saw with Vista is that the new, finely standardized rounded corner radius of macOS GoldenGate is smaller than the radius of the Magic Keyboard, so I see a tiny little bit of leftover window on the corners.
Now, while this solved the problem I had, I've since discovered that Vista does a lot more.
If you hover the cursor over the top area of the Vista window, it reveals a few more features.
It doesn't add a toolbar, but rather overlays the tools on top of the image.
It's kind of messy looking that way, but it stays true to the non-toolbar promise.
On the image, you can see the stoplight buttons and the image name over on the left and a set of tools on the right.
Have you ever been in a folder of images and you wanted to just flip through them? You can use Quick Look to do this by hitting the space bar on one of them and then using the up-down arrows to view each one.
With Preview, you can do things with the image, but you can't flip through them unless you open all of the images at once and you're flipping through them in that little sidebar thumbnail view.
You can open one image at Vista, and then using the arrow keys, you can flip through them with ease.
Okay, now that we understand this one feature, the tools are going to make a little more sense.
Starting from right to left, we have a pin button that keeps the selected image on screen, hovering above all the others as you might expect.
Interestingly, as you flip to another image using the arrow keys, the image does change, and the new image is now pinned to the screen above other windows.
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