Toggle Private Relay

Apple's iCloud Private Relay feature is a great way to improve privacy and security while you are browsing online. Its effect is similar to a VPN, but neither Apple nor the target website know both your IP address and the URL you are visiting.

However, some websites insist on seeing this information, often because they use it for identification purposes. You can reveal your IP address for a single page by right-clicking the Reload arrow in Safari's URL field, but some websites include redirections that keep this from working. Our university's SSO mechanism is one example. In these cases, you want to quickly turn Private Relay on and off, but Apple does not provide a quick way to do so.

This macro lets you toggle Private Relay on and off with a single keypress or mouse click. It opens the System Settings window and presses the right buttons to toggle that status; you can see it at work while it runs. You can map this to a single keypress (I use Fn-F6 because of its 'Do Not Disturb' moon icon), or you can trigger it from a menubar icon.

To use it, install the third-party app Keyboard Maestro first. It is the most widely known macro editor for macOS and has been around for decades. After a trial period, you need to purchase it for (currently) $36.

Unzip this file by double-clicking, then install it using Keyboard Maestro:

archive.pngToggle-iCloud-Private-Relay.kmmacros.zip

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