FarPause: A Dead-Simple 20-20-20 Eye Break Timer for Mac
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The scenario that sells this app
It's 2:47 PM. You've been heads-down in Figma or Xcode or a spreadsheet since lunch, tab-switching between a dozen windows, and you haven't blinked properly in what feels like an hour. Your eyes are dry, your vision's a little swimmy when you glance at something across the room, and you tell yourself you'll take a break "after this one task." You won't. This is exactly the moment FarPause is built for — not a wellness app you open and browse, but a background utility that interrupts you before you notice you need it, throwing a full-screen prompt over whatever you're doing and telling you to look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. No dashboard to check, no streaks to maintain, just a recurring tap on the shoulder every 20 minutes. If you've ever ended a workday with a headache and blamed "screen time" vaguely without doing anything about it, this is the use case.
What FarPause actually is
FarPause is a lightweight macOS menu bar utility that automates the 20-20-20 rule — a guideline optometrists have pushed for years, which says every 20 minutes you should look at something roughly 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds to relax your eye muscles and reduce digital eye strain. The app runs quietly in the background and surfaces a minimal full-screen overlay at the interval, holding it for the 20-second rest period before letting you get back to work. It's deliberately narrow in scope: it doesn't track posture, hydration, or overall screen time like some of the broader "digital wellness" suites. It does one thing — eye breaks — and leans on in-app purchases to unlock customization (things like adjusting interval length, break duration, overlay appearance, and presumably snoozing/skipping controls, based on what's exposed in the app's settings).
Because it's a native macOS app distributed through the Mac App Store, setup is just an install and a permissions grant — no account creation, no cloud sync, no web dashboard. That's either a feature or a limitation depending on what you want: if you're looking for cross-device break syncing or detailed strain analytics, this isn't it.
Pricing
FarPause is free to download with in-app purchases. As of this writing, Apple's listing doesn't break out specific tiered pricing publicly — there's no published "Pro is $4.99/month" page — so what you get for free versus what's gated behind a purchase isn't fully transparent before install. Based on the app's structure, the core 20-20-20 reminder and overlay appear to work out of the box for free, with IAPs unlocking deeper customization (custom intervals, appearance options, possibly disabling ads or adding extra scheduling controls). If you're price-sensitive, install it first and check the in-app purchase sheet before assuming anything — don't expect a traditional subscription wall or a free trial countdown, since that's not how the listing is structured.
Concrete use cases
- Remote developers and designers doing long uninterrupted stretches in an IDE or design tool who don't trust themselves to self-regulate breaks.
- Anyone recovering from or managing digital eye strain / dry eye who's been told by an optometrist to actually follow the 20-20-20 rule instead of just hearing about it.
- People who find break apps with heavy dashboards annoying and want something that interrupts and then gets out of the way, rather than something you "check in" with.
- Freelancers billing by the screen-hour who want a break habit that doesn't require opening a separate app or setting a phone timer that gets dismissed without action.
How it compares
FarPause enters a space that already has established players, and it's worth being honest about where it's thinner and where its narrowness is actually the point.
| FarPause | Time Out | Stretchly | Eye Care | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free + IAP (tiers not public) | Free; Time Out Pro ~$9.99 one-time (Setapp also bundles it) | Free, open source | Free with optional in-app tips/donations |
| Platform | macOS only | macOS only | Windows, macOS, Linux | iOS and macOS |
| Core focus | Strictly 20-20-20 eye rests via full-screen overlay | Customizable micro-breaks + longer breaks, with scheduling and "sneak peek" dismiss | Flexible break scheduler (micro + long breaks), fully configurable intervals, themeable | Eye-specific exercises, reminders, and blink-rate style eye health tracking |
| Customization depth | Minimal on free tier, more behind IAP | Deep: break length, frequency, idle detection, custom messages | Deep: fully open config files, custom break types | Moderate: exercise routines, reminder scheduling |
| Best for | Someone who wants zero setup and just wants the 20-20-20 rule enforced | Users who want granular control over break types and scheduling on Mac | Developers/power users who want open-source, cross-platform, and hackable break logic | Users who want guided eye exercises, not just a timer |
| Account/cloud sync | None | None | None (local config) | None |
The honest takeaway: Time Out and Stretchly are both more mature and more configurable out of the box, and Stretchly's open-source nature means you can tune it to your exact workflow for free. Eye Care leans more into guided exercises than a pure interrupt-and-rest model. FarPause's advantage is narrowness — it doesn't try to be a general break scheduler, it's purpose-built around the specific, evidence-backed 20-20-20 interval, which may appeal if you've specifically been told to follow that rule rather than a generic "take a break every hour" pattern.
Should you install it today
If you already have Time Out or Stretchly configured and working, there's no urgent reason to switch — you can replicate FarPause's exact behavior in either by setting a 20-minute/20-second break rule yourself. But if you've never gotten around to setting up a break app because the configuration screens felt like overkill for a problem you just wanted solved, FarPause's whole pitch is that there's nothing to configure. Install it, grant screen permissions, and it starts interrupting you every 20 minutes without further input. The unanswered question is pricing transparency — until FarPause publishes clear IAP tiers, you won't know if the free version is sufficient for your needs or if you'll hit a paywall after a few days of use. For a free download with no account required, that's a low-risk way to find out.