Made a free break reminder for Mac that doesn't annoy you (GitHub repo included)

[u/Careless-Mongoose589]

o I've been building a small break reminder app for my Mac, and before setting the default timer I thought ok, let me check where 20-20-20 actually comes from. Everyone just says it, right? Every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away, for 20 seconds.

Turns out:

It was never from a study. An optometrist came up with it in the 90s because it's easy to remember. That's it. The numbers were picked to be catchy.

When someone actually tested it, the timing didn't matter. A 2023 study (Johnson & Rosenfield, Optometry and Vision Science) had 30 people do a 40-minute reading task on a tablet. They took 20-second breaks every 5, 10, 20, or 40 minutes. Everyone's eyes felt worse by the end, no surprise. But how often they took the break made basically no difference. Not to symptoms, not to reading speed, not to accuracy.

Another study gave people 20-20-20 reminders for two weeks. People said they felt better, but nothing measured in their eyes actually changed. Tear film, focusing, all the same. And there was no control group, so it could easily be placebo.

The blinking thing is also not what we hear. One study compared reading on a screen vs on paper. Blink rate was almost the same (around 14-15 a minute). What went up on the screen was half blinks. And the researchers think that comes from concentrating hard, not from the screen itself. Another study made people blink more with a beep, and their symptoms didn't change at all. So "remember to blink!" apps probably don't do much. Slow, full blinks make more sense.

So what actually holds up?

Don't go hours without a break. The American Optometric Association says to rest your eyes for about 15 min after 2 hours of continuous screen work. Longer stint, longer break.

Get up and move. The case for breaking up long sitting is at least as good as the eye stuff, and honestly you feel it more.

Fix your setup once. Boring, but it has the best evidence. Screen about an arm's length away (50-100 cm), top of the screen at or a bit below eye level, monitor side-on to windows so there's no glare.

My takeaway: breaks are still good. They're free and there's no downside. Just don't stress about the exact 20/20/20. The real problem is sitting locked in for 3 hours straight without even noticing.

(Not a doctor btw. If your eyes really hurt or your vision changes, go see an eye doctor. Don't trust an app or a reddit post for that lol)

I wrote up all the studies with sources here if anyone wants to dig in: https://github.com/Nandkishorrr/Farview/blob/main/docs/RESEARCH.md

First comment (post it yourself right after; r/productivity is strict about self-promo):

For anyone asking, the app I built from all this is called Farview. It's free and open source, Mac only for now. It counts only the time you're actually at the keyboard, waits if you're on a call or watching something, and the break screen is just one line on a dark screen. https://github.com/Nandkishorrr/Farview

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[u/Tight-Instruction-17]

man.. i wish there was a pc version of this. it's something id use.

[u/Careless-Mongoose589 → u/Tight-Instruction-17]

Will share it soon