How to take eye breaks on a Mac while you work

What macOS has, and doesn’t

Apple’s Screen Distance feature isn’t on the Mac. It is part of Screen Time on iPhone and iPad (iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 or later) and uses the TrueDepth camera, the one used for Face ID, to tell you when you hold the device closer than 12 inches (30 cm) for a while. Apple lists it for devices with that camera; it doesn’t remind you to look away or to blink.

Screen Time on the Mac has Downtime and app limits, which block apps on a schedule. Neither is a break reminder. Night Shift warms the screen’s colour in the evening, which changes the light, not how often you rest your eyes.

Mac break apps

Time Out, by Dejal, has been on the Mac for years. Its core features are free: a longer Normal break for getting up and moving, and short Micro breaks in between. Optional supporter purchases (from $4.99 for three months, as of November 2026) add more. The current version needs macOS 26; an older one runs on macOS 10.15 and later.

Stretchly is free and open source, for macOS 13 and later, Windows and Linux. By default it shows a 20-second mini break every 10 minutes and a 5-minute long break every 30 minutes; set the mini breaks to every 20 minutes for the 20-20-20 rule.

LookAway is a paid Mac app (a one-time licence from $19 on its site, as of November 2026, and also in Setapp). Its breaks wait for meetings, video, screen recording and fullscreen games, and it adds blink and posture reminders.

Workrave, a free break app often recommended for Windows, has no Mac release: its site lists Windows and Linux, with a macOS port still in development.

In the browser

If most of your screen time is in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, a browser extension can remind you to blink in between breaks, when your blink rate is lowest. BlinkPause draws a soft blink on the page you’re reading every minute or so, and offers a 20-second look-away break every 20 minutes, with a soft bowl and a spoken guide that uses a voice on your Mac.

BlinkPause works only in the browser, and not in Safari. It can’t draw over Xcode, Figma’s desktop app or anything else outside it, and its blinks wait while you’re in another app. A break that comes due then waits until you’re back, unless you turn on Remind me in other apps, which shows it as a macOS notification. For long stretches in other apps, use a Mac break app too, or alone.

A routine that sticks

In a 2023 trial, reminders to follow the 20-20-20 rule eased symptoms while they ran, and the benefit had faded a week after they stopped (Talens-Estarelles, 2023). So the reminder you keep on matters more than the perfect one. Choose breaks that end by themselves and wait for calls, and look out of a window or across the room, not at your phone.