Offscreen

A native macOS menu bar app that protects your eyes with smart screen breaks — and knows when not to interrupt. Built in Swift/SwiftUI for macOS 15 and later, inspired by the apps that pioneered mindful screen breaks, but native, private, and free.

Website · Download the latest release · macOS 15+ · Apple silicon · signed & notarized

Features

• Break cycles — short breaks after each work interval (Balanced 20 min/20 s, Deep Focus 45 min/30 s, 20-20-20, or fully custom), with a long break every Nth cycle.
• Considerate break flow — a heads-up panel appears before each break (start now, or snooze +1/+5/+15 min with a per-cycle limit) without stealing keyboard focus; a countdown pill follows your cursor in the last seconds; then a full-screen overlay with a countdown ring and a rotating message covers every display, even over fullscreen apps.
• Skip difficulty — Casual (skip anytime), Balanced (skip unlocks a few seconds in), Hardcore (no skipping). Optional end-early after a minimum, and optional auto-lock when a break starts.
• Smart Pause — breaks hold automatically while your camera or mic is in use (meetings), the screen is shared or recorded, a fullscreen app is frontmost, or a designated deep-focus app is active. A due break also waits for a typing lull. Idle time and sleep/lock pause the timer, and a long absence counts as a break taken. Audio playback isn't used as a pause signal — browsers keep audio-output streams open even when nothing's playing, so it's unreliable; fullscreen video and calls are already caught by the signals above.
• Scheduling — Office Hours (only remind during chosen hours/days) and Planned Breaks (named breaks at fixed times, e.g. lunch) that reuse the same heads-up flow.
• Break-over sound — a sound that plays when a break ends (not during it) to let you know it's over, even from across the room. It keeps playing until you touch the keyboard or mouse — i.e. until you're back — then stops itself. Ships with four built-in tracks (Rain, Ocean Waves, Brown Noise, Soft Wind); pick one in Settings, or add your own file (see below).
• Stats — daily Screen Score, active screen time, breaks taken/skipped/ snoozed, and per-app usage, stored locally in SQLite with a 7-day chart view.
• System integration — live menu bar countdown and controls, global hotkeys (⌥⇧B break now, ⌥⇧P pause toggle), launch at login, and a Settings window (General / Breaks / Smart Pause / Schedule / Appearance).

Zero permission prompts: every detector uses permission-free APIs (CoreMediaIO/CoreAudio HAL properties, CGWindowList bounds, CGEventSource idle queries) — the app never asks for Accessibility, Screen Recording, Input Monitoring, camera, or microphone access.

Install

Homebrew (recommended):

brew install --cask dayaki/tap/offscreen

This adds the tap dayaki/tap and installs Offscreen.app into /Applications. Update later with brew upgrade --cask offscreen.

Or download directly: grab Offscreen-<version>.zip from the latest release, unzip, and drag Offscreen.app to Applications. Releases are Developer ID-signed and notarized by Apple, so they open without a Gatekeeper warning.

Requires macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later on Apple silicon.

Build from source

Requires Xcode 26+ (Swift 6.2 toolchain).

Scripts/build-app.sh          # swift build → Offscreen.app → ~/Applications
open ~/Applications/Offscreen.app

Scripts/dev.sh rebuilds, kills any running copy, and relaunches.

Development

swift test                    # engine, scheduling, office-hours unit tests

# Time-compressed run: N virtual seconds per real second
OFFSCREEN_TIME_SCALE=60 Scripts/dev.sh

# Real-time but compressed cycle (90 s work / 15 s break, 60 s heads-up):
OFFSCREEN_DEBUG_TIMING=1 Scripts/dev.sh

Debug commands (also in the menu bar's Debug submenu during debug runs):

swift -e 'import Foundation; DistributedNotificationCenter.default().postNotificationName(.init("com.dayo.offscreen.debug.breakNow"), object: nil, userInfo: nil, deliverImmediately: true)'
# also: .debug.skip  .debug.snooze  .debug.preBreak  .debug.dueNow  .debug.dump

Logs:

/usr/bin/log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.dayo.offscreen"' --level info

Data lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Offscreen/ (settings.json, stats.sqlite).

Adding your own break-over sounds

The four built-in tracks are generated with ffmpeg (Resources/Ambient/*.m4a, regenerate with Scripts/make-ambient.sh) and bundled into the app. To use your own audio (e.g. a track downloaded from Pixabay), drop .mp3/.wav/.aiff/.m4a/.flac files into:

~/Library/Application Support/Offscreen/Sounds

Then open Settings → Appearance → When a break ends and click Rescan — your files appear in the picker below the built-in tracks. Or use Add Your Own…, which copies a file into that folder and selects it in one step. The ▶ button previews the selected track. The sound loops until you return to your desk, so the track doesn't need to be long.

Cutting a release

Releases are built, Developer ID-signed, notarized, and stapled by Scripts/release.sh, which emits dist/Offscreen-<version>.zip.

One-time setup (needs a paid Apple Developer Program membership):

# 1. Create a "Developer ID Application" cert (Xcode → Settings → Accounts →
#    Manage Certificates → + → Developer ID Application), then confirm:
security find-identity -v -p codesigning | grep "Developer ID Application"

# 2. Store notarization credentials once (uses an app-specific password from
#    appleid.apple.com; the profile name is what release.sh expects):
xcrun notarytool store-credentials "offscreen-notary" \
  --apple-id "<you@example.com>" --team-id "<TEAMID>" --password "<app-specific-password>"

Then, per release:

# bump CFBundleShortVersionString in Resources/Info.plist, then:
Scripts/release.sh                       # → dist/Offscreen-<version>.zip (+ sha256)
gh release create v<version> dist/Offscreen-<version>.zip --title "Offscreen <version>"
# update Casks/offscreen.rb in the homebrew-tap repo with the new version + sha256

Architecture (short version)

• Core/BreakEngine — @MainActor state machine (working → preBreak → inBreak, with holding/idlePaused/inactive), ticked 4×/s using monotonic clock deltas so sleep and clock changes can't corrupt timing.
• Monitors/* — permission-free Smart Pause signal sources feeding Core/SmartPauseController, which gates them by settings into engine holds.
• Windows/* — overlay windows (.screenSaver level, joins fullscreen Spaces), non-activating pre-break panel, cursor pill.
• Persistence/* — JSON settings store (lenient decoding) + GRDB stats.
• App/AppContainer — composition root wiring everything; no singletons.