Weft
The in-class essay, written on a locked page.
A native macOS writing environment for proctored essay exams. It checks the machine before a student begins, holds the screen to the writing while they work, and gives you a live roster you can read at a glance. Grading waits in the session history until you have time.
In-class essay · American Literature · 4th period
- Amara Diallo Writing 412
- Ben Okafor Writing 388
- Casey Liu Submitted 527
- Daniel Reyes Left fullscreen 301
- Emma Sato Writing 264
- Farah Khan Joined 0
The product
A writing room, not a browser plug-in.
Weft is a native macOS app for proctored essay exams in the classroom. You build and launch essay assignments; your students write in a locked, full-screen exam screen on their own Macs; you watch a live roster while the room writes, and you grade from the session history days later, when you actually have a prep period.
Native matters here. The lockdown is done by macOS itself: the operating system swallows app switching, force quit, the Dock, and the menu bar, and the exam window holds the screen. A browser tab can promise that. An operating system can do it.
Weft replaces the Electron pilot that proved the idea at one school. Every check the pilot paid for carries over; the enforcement moved down into the operating system, where it belongs.
Limit. Weft proctors the machine it runs on, nothing else. It does not record audio or keystrokes, does not scan files, and never scores the writing. Judgment stays with the teacher in the room.
The session
One exam, from launch to release.
Six steps, including the outline a student can bring before exam day.
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You launch for a class
Build the assignment once in your Library: the prompt, a word limit, a time limit in minutes, a spell-check switch, attached reference PDFs, and the websites you approve. Launching binds it to a class and produces a session code. One session is live at a time; ending a session closes every open one.
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Before exam day: the outline, if you allow one
Per assignment, you can allow students to bring an outline as a PDF or Word document. They upload it in the student portal and can replace it as often as they like, right up to the moment they begin writing. The instant a student enters the exam, their outline locks. You read the latest version beside the essay when you grade.
Limit. Weft preserves the outline that existed when writing began. It does not compare the outline to the essay; that reading is yours.
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Checks at the door
On each student's Mac, Weft sweeps the machine: remote-control and screen-capture software, virtual-machine traces, attached displays. The student sees a plain privacy label stating what is checked and what is never touched: no audio, no keystroke logging, no files. Then they begin, and the facts of that sweep land on your roster.
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Locked, full-screen writing
The exam takes the whole screen. The Dock, the menu bar, app switching, and force quit are off, and the window stays above everything else. References live in a side panel: the PDFs you attached and a locked browser that opens only the sites you approved, subdomains included, redirects re-checked, pop-ups refused. The page itself is plain paper: Times New Roman 12, double-spaced, autosaved on every edit. When the time limit runs out, the essay saves itself and locks.
Limit. The student can always submit and leave. Lockdown holds the exam together; it does not hold the student hostage.
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You watch the roster, not their shoulders
Each student is a row: name, status (Writing, Submitted, Left fullscreen), and the integrity signals from their machine. If flagged software appears mid-exam, that student's writing pauses under a calm overlay naming the app and resumes when it closes. If they leave full screen, the row flips and the screen waits for an explicit resume. Both are visible to you as they happen.
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Grading, days later
Every session stays in the class history, and any session opens for review at any time. Essays render on paper; you score, comment, and release when you are ready. A first release sends the student one email, which never contains the score. If you allowed outlines, the latest outline sits beside each essay.
The checks
What the sweep looks for.
The sweep matches 45 named applications in two tiers: software that can hand control of the machine to someone else, and software that can show the screen to someone else. It runs once at the door and then again, in full, every five seconds for the whole exam.
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Remote desktop and remote control
What it looks forTeamViewer, AnyDesk, Chrome Remote Desktop, VNC, Parsec, RustDesk, Splashtop, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, NoMachine, ScreenConnect, BeyondTrust, Zoho Assist, DameWare, Apple Remote Desktop, and the macOS Screen Sharing daemon itself.
What happensFlagged at the door. Mid-exam, the student's writing pauses under an overlay that names the app and resumes when it closes.
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Screen sharing, capture, and mirroring
What it looks forZoom, Teams, Webex, Discord, Slack, Skype, OBS, Streamlabs, XSplit, Camtasia, ScreenFlow, Loom, Snagit, CleanShot X, Bandicam, Kap, ShareX, plus phone mirrors: iPhone Mirroring, scrcpy, Vysor, AirDroid, Reflector, ApowerMirror, LetsView.
What happensSame pause-and-resume. When the offending app closes, writing continues without losing a word.
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Virtual machines
What it looks forVMware, Parallels, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, QEMU, Xen. Three escalating probes: the hardware model, CPU and hypervisor flags, then a scan of the device tree for hypervisors that scrub the first two.
What happensRegistered at the door and shown on the roster row.
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Display count
What it looks forHow many displays are attached. One is expected; a second could be a hidden screen.
What happensMore than one is a soft warning on your roster, never a silent block.
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Full screen and focus
What it looks forLeaving full screen, switching apps, or an overlay stealing focus from the exam window.
What happensThe writing blacks out until the student explicitly resumes, and the roster row flips to Left fullscreen.
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Mid-exam re-checks
What it looks forThe entire sweep, again.
What happensEvery five seconds, start to submit. A machine that was clean at the door and turns dirty mid-exam is caught within seconds.
Honest limits
What it watches, and what it cannot see.
It watches the machine
Three surfaces, watched precisely:
- The machine: running software, hypervisor traces, full-screen focus.
- The displays: how many screens are attached, re-counted every sweep.
- The network the reference browser touches: every navigation is checked against your approved list, subdomains included, redirects re-checked, pop-ups refused.
A second laptop is caught the moment it touches the exam machine: remote desktop, screen sharing, and mirroring all surface in the sweep and on your roster.
It cannot see the room
A phone on the desk is invisible to software running on a different device. So is a printed page, and so is a whisper. Weft does not claim to see them, and it declines to try: no webcam, no microphone, no keystroke log, no file scan, and current builds take no screenshots. Monitoring ends the moment a student submits.
That restraint is deliberate. Weft is built for in-class exams precisely because the room already has a proctor: you.
Limit. A second laptop that never connects to the exam machine is part of the room, not the machine. Treat it like a phone: seat for sight lines, and let Weft hold the screen.
Download
Get Weft.
The latest release of a native macOS app. Requires macOS 26.1 or later.
The buttons always fetch the newest build straight from the releases page; nothing to update by hand.