Faux écran de travail (leurre)
Hiding a window leaves whatever was behind it — sometimes that's worse: an empty desktop at 2pm looks exactly like someone who just hid something. A fake work screen (a decoy) solves the second half of the problem: when your real windows vanish, something believable takes their place.
The manual way (and why it falls short)
The classic trick is keeping a spreadsheet or an email draft open behind everything, then Alt+Tab-ing to it. Two problems:
- Alt+Tab is slow and visible — you fumble through the switcher while someone is already reading your screen.
- The taskbar still betrays you — the game or chat app is still right there as a button, and its tray icon is still in the corner.
The gohide way: hide + decoy in one keystroke
gohide's privacy cover screen (a Pro feature) shows a full-screen, believable decoy the moment you hit your hide hotkey:
- Pick the apps gohide manages and assign a hide/show hotkey.
- Enable the cover screen in settings and choose what it shows.
- One keystroke: your selected apps disappear — window, taskbar button and tray icon — and the decoy appears on top. Press again: decoy gone, everything restored exactly where it was.
Because gohide also hides taskbar buttons and tray icons, the decoy holds up to a second look — there's no leftover icon contradicting the innocent screen.
Good decoys
A decoy works when it's boring and plausible for your job: a spreadsheet, a document, a terminal with a build running, a training video paused mid-frame. Avoid anything interactive that would look frozen if someone watches for a few seconds.
When a picture isn't enough: a real app as your cover story
A still image has one weakness — it's still. Someone who stands there for ten seconds sees a screen where nothing ever blinks, and a cursor that doesn't do anything.
So gohide's cover has a second mode: instead of an image, it brings a real application to the front. Choose it under Settings → Privacy cover → Cover style → Bring an app to the front, and pick the program you're supposedly working in. When you hide, gohide opens it (or raises the copy already running) so what's on screen is a genuine, live, scrollable app — one you can actually type in if the conversation goes that way.
Two things to know about this mode:
- Pick a normal desktop program — an editor, an Office app, a file manager. Microsoft Store apps often can't be raised to the front by another program, so gohide has to open a new window instead of reusing the one you already had.
- It doesn't blank the desktop. Unlike the image cover, an app is just a window on top: Alt+Tab can still reveal what's behind it. It's a cover story, not a wall. If you want the desktop genuinely gone, use the image cover — or the lock-screen hotkey.
Getting there faster
The cover appears the instant you hide, so what matters is how fast you can trigger the hide. Besides the hotkey, gohide Pro can fire the same action from the mouse — throw the pointer into a screen corner, or press a mouse side button. See hide windows with the mouse.
Free vs Pro
Hiding windows, taskbar buttons and tray icons with a hotkey is free for up to 5 apps — download gohide. The decoy cover screen, process suspend, unlimited apps and dynamic selection are part of gohide Pro — a one-time purchase, no subscription. See pricing.