A macOS menu bar app that keeps your eyes healthy with the 20-20-20 rule.
Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
Staring at a screen for hours without breaks leads to digital eye strain — headaches, blurry vision, and tired eyes. The 20-20-20 rule is the simplest, most effective remedy: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
StarePatrol lives in your menu bar and enforces this rule silently, with gentle reminders that actually work.
- 🕐 Configurable intervals — set your own work and break durations
- 🔔 Three alert styles — full-screen takeover, system notification, or silent
- 🔊 Sounds — distinct sounds at break start and break end (choose from 8 system sounds)
- ⏸ Flexible pause — pause for 1 min up to 2 h, or pause indefinitely (∞)
- 🔒 Strict Mode — disable skip/snooze for maximum discipline
- 📊 Statistics — track breaks taken and skipped over time
- 🚀 Launch at Login — starts automatically when you log in
- ✏️ Customizable message — change the text shown during breaks
- 🎨 Customizable menu bar icon — pick the SF Symbol you like most
- 🖱️ Haptic feedback — subtle tap when a break starts
- macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
- Apple Silicon (arm64)
Grab StarePatrol.app from the release/ folder, move it to /Applications, and open it.
macOS may show a security prompt the first time. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
git clone https://github.com/abram0v1ch/StarePatrol.git
cd StarePatrol
make runThis compiles, signs ad-hoc, and launches the app automatically. Output is always at release/StarePatrol.app.
StarePatrol appears as an icon in your menu bar. Click it to:
- See the countdown to your next break
- Pause the timer — drag the slider all the way to ∞ to pause indefinitely
- Hit Reset Timer to restart the countdown immediately
- Open Preferences… to configure everything
For Notification alert mode, open:
System Settings → Notifications → StarePatrol → set style to Alerts
so break notifications persist until you dismiss them.
| Section | What you can configure |
|---|---|
| General | Enable/disable, Launch at Login, Strict Mode |
| Intervals | Work duration (1–60 min), break duration (5–300 sec) |
| Notifications | Alert style, sound at break start / break end, sound selection, haptics |
| Appearance | Menu bar icon, custom reminder message |
| Statistics | Breaks taken / skipped count, reset button |
| Debug | Trigger an instant break to test settings |
make build # compile to release/StarePatrol.app
make run # build + open
make clean # quit + remove build artifactsMade by Vasyl Abramovych — @abram0v1ch
MIT — see LICENSE for details.