Click-through: use the app behind Assistly without moving it
By The Assistly team ·
An always-on-top assistant has a built-in tension. You want it visible and readable, floating above your call or your editor so you can glance at it without breaking stride. But "on top" also means it sits between your cursor and whatever is behind it. When you need to click something the overlay is covering, you end up moving it, shrinking it, or hiding it, usually when you can least afford the fiddling.
Click-through removes that tension. Turn it on and your clicks (and scrolls, and drags) pass straight through Assistly to the window underneath, as if the overlay weren't there, while it stays where it is, on top and readable.
What it does
When click-through is on, Assistly stops intercepting the mouse. The overlay is still drawn, still floating, still showing your live guidance, but every click lands on the app behind it. You can keep typing in your editor, scrubbing a slide deck, or navigating a browser with the answer hovering over your work, and never reach over to move it out of the way.
This is not a screenshot or a faded ghost of the window. It's the real overlay,
fully legible, that no longer catches the pointer. Under the hood it's a
standard OS capability (macOS's ignoresMouseEvents and Windows's transparent
window style), so input is routed by the operating system itself rather than
faked in software.
Because the whole window stops taking the mouse while it's on (including Assistly's own controls), the way back is a keyboard shortcut rather than a click. Toggle it with ⌘⌃P on macOS or Ctrl+Alt+P on Windows, or from your avatar menu → Click-through. While it's active, a small badge in the title bar shows you the shortcut to turn it back off, so you're never stranded.
Why you'd want it
- Coding interviews and live problem-solving. Keep the structured approach or the talking points floating over your editor and keep typing. The overlay hovers above your code instead of blocking the line you're on.
- Following a deck or a document. Scroll and click through the material underneath while the summary or the next question stays pinned on top.
- Busy multi-window work. When you've placed the overlay in a corner that happens to sit over a button you need, you click through it instead of moving it.
It fits with the rest of how Assistly stays out of the way. The overlay is already excluded from screen shares and recordings at the OS level, so no one else on the call sees it; you can reposition it with hotkeys without touching the mouse; and with click-through it can sit over your work without intercepting a click. It's off by default. Turn it on when you need to work underneath, and off when you want to interact with Assistly again.
The limits
Click-through is a convenience for your own workflow, not a stealth feature. Everyone else's view is governed by the screen-capture exclusion, which is what keeps Assistly out of a screen share. Click-through only changes whether your cursor hits the overlay or the app behind it. And while it's on, you interact with the overlay through its hotkeys rather than by clicking it, which is why the toggle lives on the keyboard and the badge keeps the shortcut in view.
As always, use Assistly within the rules of whatever meeting, call, or interview you're in.