Overview
Paw Pause is a macOS menu bar application that detects when a cat walks on the keyboard and pauses the keyboard system-wide. According to its README, it uses the same detection model as the pawpause library, described as six weighted signals, a 1.5s window, a threshold of 1.0, and roughly 1s auto-release.
When the rolling score crosses the threshold, the app swallows every keyboard event before it reaches any application, blocking both typing and shortcuts. The menu bar icon turns into a filled red paw, and an optional notification and soft sound fire once.
Release can occur automatically when the keyboard is quiet and no keys are held, via the Escape key, by unlocking in the menu, or by turning off Cat Mode. A "Stay locked until I unlock" option disables auto-release for a persistent cat.
The README notes an honest limitation: a system-wide tap cannot roll back text already typed into arbitrary apps, so native mode is suppression only and a few characters may slip through before the score crosses the threshold.
Pricing
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Use Cases
- Users use Paw Pause to stop a cat's keyboard input from reaching applications such as Slack or Terminal.
- Users use Paw Pause to prevent key combinations from firing shortcuts while a cat is on the keyboard.
- Users press Escape as a guaranteed human override to lift the clamp instantly.
- Users enable "Stay locked until I unlock" to keep the keyboard paused for a persistent cat.
- Users drag the Sensitivity slider and re-test to tune the threshold for their cat.
- Users test without a cat by mashing 4–5 adjacent keys at once to trigger the red paw and keyboard pause.
Features
AI assistant
Natural language interface
Workflow automation
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