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%.
v2.8 [May 26, 2021]
- A quick fix to have the Do Not Disturb break exclusion option off by default, as apparently a lot of people leave DND on all the time, resulting in unintentionally missing breaks. Sorry about that!
Version 2.8 also includes:
• New option to end a break early.
• New option to postpone breaks for app exclusions.
• Added an option to skip breaks when Do Not Disturb is on.
• Can now show the time since the last break in the status item.
• Control Time Out via URL schemes.
• New LCD Digital Clock break theme.
• Plus other improvements. Read the release notes on the Updates page in the app for full details.
