Time Out is a must-have tool for people who often forget to take breaks from their work. The program lets you know when it's time to move away from your monitor and relax your eyes or stretch. Not many people are aware of the risks they face when working too long in front of a screen.
Before using the program on your Mac, you first need to go to System Preferences and grant it permission to detect keyboard activity. By default, Time Out can detect mouse or trackpad usage, but not keyboard activity. So, make sure you complete this step before working with Time Out on your computer. The instructions are given by the Welcome assistant of the tool.
You have access to 2 reminder profiles which can be altered to meet your needs. One of the profiles is created for small breaks while the other one is for longer breaks. You can change the amount of time per break, alter the notification options according to your needs, and schedule the alarms however you like.
Another great thing about this tool is that it provides you with an option to skip breaks if a certain program is opened or frontmost.
The only aspect that bothers me is that you need to pay if you want to manage more than 2 break profiles.
Hence, it's worth downloading and installing this program on your Mac if the aforementioned flaw means nothing to you. Overall, Time Out provides you with many useful advantages, is simple to handle, and works 100%.
v2.1 [Sep 19, 2016]
- Changed the way the scheduler handles the first break of the day, so the work time is now equal between each break. For example, a 10 minute break every hour will now start the break after 50 minutes of work time, and so on throughout the day.
- Now displays the work time next to the frequency control.
- Replaced the Reset After Duration natural break option with a checkbox to reset after a specified interval of idle, screensaver or sleep time, where you can choose the threshold interval. Off by default, and is a supporter reward, like the old option.
- Added an option to reset the break after finishing a higher priority break. This is useful to keep lower priority breaks (e.g. Micro) aligned with higher priority ones (e.g. Normal). Off by default, and is also a supporter reward.
- Added an option on the General preferences page to only include long breaks in the status menu bar item. Off by default, so all breaks are included, but if you only want a countdown to the next lengthy break (of a minute or more), you can turn this on.
- Added an Edit Break command in the break Options menu, to make editing breaks more intuitive. This is equivalent to simply selecting the break in the sidebar, and will show an alert mentioning this.
- Added a Start Next Break command in the File and action (cog) menus to manually begin the break that is next due. Especially useful as it can have a global keyboard shortcut assigned to it via the Shortcuts preferences.
- Added a Reveal Data Folder command in those menus, to quickly and easily show the Time Out data folder in the Finder, as an easier way to add or edit sounds and themes, or send the data to Dejal for diagnostics.
- Added a Reveal Sounds command to the sound pop-up menu in the Play Sound action, to show the Sounds folder in the Finder.
- Added headings in the Play Sound menu, to indicate where each of the groups of sounds are located on disk.
- Added some new built-in sounds: two different bells and a ticking clock. If you find any short public domain sound that others might like, let us know!
- Added a new Post Tweet action to post an update to Twitter. It is only available from Mac OS Sierra (10.12), due to a bug in previous OS versions that prevents authorizing accounts.
- It includes an account popup to choose from which account to post. This could be fun for social peer pressure — tweet when completing a break.
- Added the Sleep Mac action (available via the Time Out Extras page) to the default set. This AppleScript simply puts the Mac to sleep. Useful if you want it to be asleep during a break or at the end of day.
- Added the Start Screensaver action (also available there) to the default set. This AppleScript simply activates the screensaver. Useful if you want the screensaver on during a break.
- Also added a new Stop Screensaver action. This AppleScript deactivates the screensaver if it's active. Useful as an action at the end of a break.
- Added a comment on the first page of the Setup Assistant to explain how to change the duration and frequency controls: "tab/arrow between components; arrow up/down or type to change values; click or spacebar to show a menu of options."
- Updated the tooltips of those controls to give the same tips.
- When returning to the Setup Assistant later in the app session, it now opens to the first page again, instead of whichever one was displayed when last closed.
- After trying supporter rewards, the Support Time Out page is selected, to hopefully help clarify that the features reverting is not a bug.
- For the Mac App Store edition, if a purchase hasn't been registered with the Dejal server, it will now ask you to do so when you next show the Support Time Out page, to avoid an issue that affects some people.
- Improvement: When launching the direct edition for the first time, if the Mac App Store edition has previously been used, the direct edtion will use the same data, to make migration easier.
- Improvement: Global shortcuts are now correctly removed after trying supporter rewards.
- Improvement: If not using the Event Monitor idle detector (as set on the Advanced preferences), no longer unnecessarily sets up the event monitors on launch.
- Improvement: Possible workaround for an Apple bug that causes the clipboard to stop working.
- Fixed a crasher on Mac OS Sierra (10.12) when displaying the support info popovers.
- Fixed a crasher when changing preference pages.
- Updated the help book.
