A tiny macOS menu bar app that enforces a 5-minute break every 25 minutes.
| Menu bar icon: the ring fills up as the break approaches | One-minute warning, top-right of the screen |
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- Menu bar icon: a cup inside a ring of five segments that fill up as the break approaches.
- Warning one minute before the break: a floating panel with a countdown, plus Snooze (3 min) and Break now buttons.
- Break: every display is covered; the Dock, the menu bar, ⌘Tab, ⌘Q and Force Quit are disabled. Skipping the break requires holding the button for 2 seconds.
- Quick unlock for 20 s during a break, e.g. to pause a video: the break is paused meanwhile and the screen locks again on its own (or with Back to break).
- Break over: the screen stays locked until you click “Resume” (or press ↩︎), which starts a new 25-minute cycle.
- Disable from the menu bar for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, until tomorrow, or until you turn it back on.
- If the session is locked or the Mac sleeps for longer than a break, the 25-minute cycle starts over.
- Durations, sounds and launch at login are configurable in Settings….
- Available in English and French (follows the system language).
Requirements: macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon or Intel.
Requires Xcode or the Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install):
./scripts/build.sh # → build/Break.app and build/Break.zip
./scripts/install.sh # installs build/Break.app into ~/ApplicationsThe app is always universal (Apple Silicon + Intel). The build script calls swiftc directly and the code avoids SwiftUI macros such as @State, so it also builds with Command Line Tools installs that cannot read Package.swift or lack SwiftUI’s macro plugins. Package.swift is still used for swift test and for opening the project in Xcode.
Run the tests:
swift testTo run a full cycle quickly, make a “minute” shorter than 60 seconds:
BREAK_SECONDS_PER_MINUTE=2 BREAK_DEBUG=1 build/Break.app/Contents/MacOS/BreakUI strings are written in English in the code; translations live in Resources/<language>.lproj/Localizable.strings.