This week I released a new Safari App Extension, Private Window Status.

It solves a very specific problem. When in Dark Mode on macOS, I have a very hard time determining when a window is Private or not. The shades of gray (grey?) are so subtle to my eyes, and there are no other distinguishing features to let you know that you are Private browsing.

This extension puts a non-operating button on the toolbar with an icon that indicates the Private status of the window. That’s basically it. It’s probably less useful if you don’t use Dark Mode, but it can still be an extra indicator of Private window mode.

Private	Non-Private

One small issue is that if you open a new window without a web page, the icon will automatically be disabled. The reason is that the Safari APIs work on the page-level, not the window-level. If there is no page loaded, my extension can’t tell if it is in Private-browsing mode. Once a page is loaded, the icon refreshes to the correct current state. At this point, I don’t have a good workaround for this, other than to default to it being “disabled”.

Anyway, the code is up on GitHub for you to try.

19 May 2020 Update: I now have an executable to install the extension. Download the DMG and install the app. You’ll need to run the app once and enable the extension. Once you’ve done that, you can quit the app.