Like anyone in an office-based job, I spend an inordinate amount of time staring at various screens. It doesn’t help that I enjoy a lot of my hobbies via my laptop, either. I’m always looking for ways to counteract the huge amount of time I spend sedentary, but it’s very easy for me to get so absorbed in what I’m doing that I forget to take breaks.
That’s why I built Eyes Up, a tiny macOS app that reminds you to take a 20 second break from your screen every 20 minutes, to focus your eyes on something 20 feet away. Calming ambient tones play, and your screen blurs beautifully as the Eyes Up interface takes over for the next 20 seconds.
There are many existing apps out there that help users follow the 20/20/20 rule, but many of them require either signing up for a subscription (!) or at least paying a one-off cost. I’d been messing around with Cursor and Claude Code to create custom Raycast extensions for a while, and decided to take on Eyes Up as my first attempt to make an entire app. And this way, I get to set it up just the way I wanted.
The app is currently in alpha testing with a small group.. Once Eyes Up is in a place where I consider it finished (at least to a 1.0 level), I’ll post it here as a free download for anyone who wants to try it out.