How to take eye breaks on Windows while you work

What Windows has built in

Nothing made for eye breaks. The Clock app has Focus sessions: you choose how long you want to work and whether to have breaks, and Windows turns on do not disturb and shows a timer. Its breaks come between longer focus periods (you can set both lengths in the Clock app’s settings), so it suits a work rhythm better than a 20-second look away every 20 minutes. It also stops when the session ends.

Night light, in Settings under Display, warms the screen’s colour in the evening. It changes the light, not how often you rest your eyes, so it’s no substitute for breaks.

Free break apps for Windows

Stretchly is free and open source, for Windows, macOS 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 and you have the 20-20-20 rule.

Workrave is free, for Windows and Linux. It has micro-breaks (about 30 seconds every 3 minutes by default), longer rest breaks and an optional daily limit. Both apps work across every program on your computer, which is their advantage over anything in a browser.

EyeLeo, a free Windows app with a leopard that acts out eye exercises, still turns up in older guides. AlternativeTo lists it as discontinued and we couldn’t reach its website, so one of the two above is the safer choice.

In the browser

If most of your screen time is in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, an extension can do something a break timer doesn’t: 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 spoken guide.

BlinkPause works only in the browser. It can’t draw over Word, Excel or a game, 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 Windows notification. If you spend long stretches in desktop apps, pair it with a system-wide break app, or use one of those alone.

A routine that sticks

Studies of the 20-20-20 rule found it eased symptoms while people kept doing it, and the benefit 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 on their own, look out of a window or across the room rather than at your phone, and let the reminder wait for calls.