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Optional feature

Smart Screen Analysis

It's how Hubbub tells a tutorial from a time sink when the tab could be either. It's off until you turn it on, it takes about a minute to set up, and the picture of your screen never leaves your computer.

The short version

Your Mac takes a picture of the window you're working in, reads the text out of it on the spot, and throws the picture away. What travels to us is that text — a few lines of what was on the page — with passwords, card numbers and account numbers masked out before it goes, and it's used for one thing: deciding whether what you're looking at is the thing you sat down to do. Nothing is recorded, nothing is stored, and no image ever leaves the machine.

What it actually does

It tells a lecture from a rabbit hole
Most apps and sites are easy: a code editor is work, an endless-scroll feed isn't. The hard ones are the pages that are both — a YouTube tab is a tutorial or it's a prank compilation, a subreddit is a help thread or it's memes. Smart Screen Analysis is what lets Hubbub read the page in front of you and tell which one you're on.
Without it, those pages fall back to a guess
Hubbub still works with it off — it just has to resolve every one of those in-between pages the same way every time, from a per-site default rather than from what's actually on screen. In a browser that default leans towards letting things through, so the pages most likely to eat your afternoon are the ones it's least sure about.
Your activity breakdown gets sharper
The report that shows where your attention actually went is built from the same classifications. Better calls on the ambiguous stuff means a day's breakdown that matches the day you remember having.

Turning it on, on a Mac

Six short steps and one restart — and Hubbub notices most of it on its own.

Step 1: Open Settings in Hubbub

Click the gear icon in the left sidebar. Smart Screen Analysis has its own row, below Response Mode and Work Hours.

Step 2: Flip the Smart Screen Analysis toggle on

The toggle won't stay on yet — that's expected. macOS won't let an app read the screen until you've granted Screen Recording permission, so Hubbub opens a dialog instead of pretending the feature is running.

You can close that dialog and nothing happens — the setting stays off and the rest of Hubbub is untouched. This is an enhancement you opt into, not a gate you have to get through.

The Smart Screen Analysis row in Hubbub's Settings, reading “Uses an on-device screenshot of your active window to sharpen focus detection. Requires macOS Screen Recording permission.”, with its toggle switched off.

Step 3: Click Open System Settings

The dialog shows the switch you're about to turn on. macOS may first show its own small box saying Hubbub “would like to record this computer's screen and audio” — click Open System Settings there too.

“Screen and audio” is macOS's wording for every app that asks. Hubbub never asks for the microphone and has no way to record sound.

Hubbub's “Screen Recording access needed” dialog: an explanation, a green-ticked note reading “Screen only — audio is never recorded. Screenshots are analyzed on your Mac; only the result is sent to our servers, never the image.”, a picture of the System Settings pane with Hubbub highlighted and its toggle on, and Cancel / Open System Settings buttons.

Step 4: Switch Hubbub on

System Settings opens to Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording (just “Screen Recording” on older macOS). Find Hubbub in the top list and switch it on; macOS asks for your password or Touch ID to confirm. This is macOS's own permission — you can come back to this pane any time and switch it off again.

Hubbub not in the list? Click + under it and add Hubbub from your Applications folder. And granting it doesn't start anything by itself: whether Hubbub reads the screen is still the toggle you just flipped.

System Settings, Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording: Hubbub's row highlighted with its switch on, and an empty “System Audio Recording Only” list below. Other apps are drawn as blank placeholders.

Illustration of macOS — the wording and layout shift a little between macOS versions, and your list of apps will differ.

Step 5: Come back to Hubbub — it already noticed

You don't have to click anything to confirm. The dialog is watching for the grant and picks it up within a couple of seconds, then changes to “Restart to finish” on its own.

Step 6: Restart Hubbub once

macOS only hands a new Screen Recording grant to a freshly started app, so Smart Screen Analysis can't take effect in the process that's already running. Click Restart Hubbub and it reopens with the feature on. (If macOS offers Quit & Reopen itself, that works just as well.)

“Not now” is a real option. The choice was saved the moment the permission landed, so Smart Screen Analysis turns itself on the next time you open Hubbub — whether that's from this button, from Cmd-Q and reopening, or from your next reboot. And it re-checks the permission before switching on, so if you change your mind and revoke it in System Settings first, nothing turns on.

The same dialog once the permission lands: “Restart to finish”, a green tick reading “Screen Recording access granted”, and Not now / Restart Hubbub buttons.

On Windows, it's just the toggle

Windows has no screen-recording permission to grant, and the reading happens through Windows' own on-device text recognition. Open Settings, switch Smart Screen Analysis on, and that's the whole setup — no system dialog, no restart. Everything below about where the data stops applies the same way.

Where the data stops

“Screen Recording” is macOS's name for the permission, not a description of what Hubbub does with it. Nothing is being recorded — there's no video, no reel of your day, and no screenshot that outlives the half-second it takes to read. Here's the whole path, end to end.

  1. On your computer · A picture of your active window

    Just the window you're in, not your whole desktop or your other screens.

  2. On your computer · Read, then deleted

    Your own machine turns the picture into text and discards the picture. This is the step that never happens anywhere but on your computer — the image has no path off it.

  3. On your computer · Sensitive bits masked out

    The text is scanned before it's allowed to leave, and anything shaped like a password, a card number, a government ID number, an account number or a money amount is replaced with Xs. Sites and apps in sensitive categories lose their name here too.

  4. Leaves your computer · The masked text

    A few lines of text, used to answer one question: focus, or distraction? That's the only thing that crosses the line, and it's the only reason it's sent.

Illustrative — the order of the steps, not a screenshot of them.

The honest ceiling

We'd rather tell you this than have you find it in the policy later: the masking is good, not perfect. It's pattern-matching running on your machine, and we can't promise it catches every sensitive thing in every circumstance. If something on your screen is genuinely not ours to see even as text, the answer isn't a better filter — it's leaving this switched off, which costs you nothing but a bit of accuracy on the pages Hubbub finds ambiguous.

And the things we never do, with this on or off: we don't record audio, we don't sell your data, there are no ads in Hubbub, and nobody on our side goes browsing through your activity. The full commitment, in detail, is in the privacy policy — the Smart Screen Analysis section covers this feature specifically.

Questions people ask first

Are my screenshots saved anywhere?
No. A screenshot exists only for the moment it takes to read it, then it's discarded. It isn't written to disk, it isn't kept in a history you could scroll back through, and it's never uploaded — there is no setting that changes any of that.
What about my password manager, or my bank?
Before any text leaves your computer, it's scanned on-device and anything that looks like a password, a card number, a government ID number, an account number or a money amount is masked out. Separately, sites and apps in sensitive categories — banking, health, adult, dating, addiction and recovery, legal, religion and politics — never have their name sent at all: the time still gets counted, but it's grouped as “Other” before it leaves the machine, so it isn't in your history and isn't visible to us.
Is it listening to anything?
No. Screen Recording is the only permission involved, Hubbub never asks for microphone access, and there is no audio path in the product to use it if it had one.
Is it running all the time?
Only while Hubbub is actively watching for distractions. Turn on “Only During Work Hours” in Settings and it stops outside the hours you set.
Hubbub's first-time setup asked me for screen access. Why?
Smart Screen Analysis is already on for your account — most likely you turned it on before, perhaps before reinstalling Hubbub. Setup then asks for it as its last step. It's the same switch and the same one restart as above; if you don't want the feature, turn it off in Hubbub's Settings and setup won't ask again.
Can I turn it off later?
Yes, and immediately — the toggle in Settings, no permission and no restart needed. If you'd rather close the door behind you as well, switch Hubbub off under Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording in System Settings — in that order: switch the macOS setting off while the feature is still on, and Hubbub treats it as missing and asks for it again. (One exception: if you have a focus partner, switching it off is a request they answer, the same way unblocking a site is.)

Stuck, or something on screen doesn't match what's described here? Email support@77sparx.com. If you're still setting Hubbub up, the Mac install walkthrough covers the steps before this one.