Guide · 7 min read
How Invisible Mode Works on macOS
Interview Cheat's Invisible Mode hides the overlay from every screen-capture path on macOS. The technical reason is one specific Apple API. Here is what it does and what it does not.
The short answer
Invisible Mode uses the macOS ScreenCaptureKit content-filter API to exclude Interview Cheat's overlay window from any capture stream. When a screen-share tool (Zoom, Google Meet, QuickTime, Loom, OBS) asks macOS for the screen contents, the system applies the filter at the OS level and returns a frame with Interview Cheat's window erased. The asking app never sees the overlay because the OS removes it before the asking app gets the frame.
This is different from how older screen-share-hiding tricks work. Most rely on either window-level flags that some capture tools respect and others ignore, or on rendering the overlay on a secondary display the user can choose not to share. ScreenCaptureKit content filtering is enforced at the system layer, so the capture API itself returns the filtered frame; it does not rely on the capturing app to cooperate.
What ScreenCaptureKit is
ScreenCaptureKit is Apple's modern framework for capturing screen content on macOS, introduced in macOS 12.3 and broadly adopted by screen-share apps starting in macOS 13. It replaced older APIs like CGWindowListCreateImage and AVCaptureScreenInput, which are now deprecated for new code paths.
The framework provides an SCContentFilter object that defines what is included or excluded from the capture. When a capture stream is constructed with a filter that excludes a specific window, the system enforces the exclusion at the compositor — the captured frame is rendered without that window.
Why Zoom, Google Meet, Loom, and QuickTime all respect it
All major screen-share and recording apps on macOS use ScreenCaptureKit as their capture path on macOS 13 and later — Zoom, Google Meet (via Chrome and Safari), Microsoft Teams, Loom, QuickTime Player, OBS, ScreenFlow, and the built-in macOS recording. The filter applies to every consumer of the API.
This includes background recording from MDM tools that use ScreenCaptureKit, and AI meeting-summary tools like Otter, Fireflies, and Granola that capture screen content for analysis.
What Invisible Mode does NOT hide from
A physical camera pointed at your laptop screen. The OS cannot filter pixels off the front of your monitor.
Reflections in your glasses, in a window behind you, or in the surface of a glossy desk.
Older screen-capture APIs that have not been deprecated yet — though all consumer screen-share apps on macOS 13+ have migrated to ScreenCaptureKit.
An accessibility tool that reads the contents of your screen via the Accessibility API. A screen reader will still see the overlay as an accessible element. (No common monitoring tools use this path.)
Anything happening on a second machine. If you are AirPlaying or using a USB capture card to mirror your screen to another device, the second device may capture the overlay depending on how the mirror is implemented.
Why we built it on this API specifically
Earlier interview-overlay tools used the deprecated NSWindow level NSWindowSharingNone hint, which some screen capture tools respected and others ignored. The behavior was inconsistent across versions of Zoom and across macOS releases.
ScreenCaptureKit content filtering is the API Apple introduced to make stealth deterministic. The filter is enforced by the compositor before the frame leaves the OS; the capturing app cannot opt out. As long as macOS keeps ScreenCaptureKit as the canonical capture path — which is the explicit direction Apple has signaled — Invisible Mode will keep working without per-tool tuning.
The verification we run
Every release, we run a regression suite against the major capture consumers — Zoom share screen (full and window), Google Meet in Chrome and Safari (full, window, tab), QuickTime screen recording, macOS built-in recording, Loom desktop, OBS, and ScreenCaptureKit-backed MDM tools. The overlay must be absent from every captured frame.
When Apple ships a major macOS release, we re-run the suite before publishing the build for that release. If a capture path changes, we hold the release until the filter is verified.
Key takeaways
- Invisible Mode uses the macOS ScreenCaptureKit SCContentFilter API to exclude the overlay from every capture stream.
- The filter is enforced at the OS compositor, so capturing apps cannot opt out.
- Every major screen-share and recording app on macOS 13+ uses ScreenCaptureKit and is therefore covered.
- It does NOT hide from a physical camera or from reflections — those are fundamental limits of any overlay.
- A per-release regression suite verifies the filter against every major capture consumer.