Show HN: macOS app to reduce eye strain (open-source)

Remy42 · 2025-03-25T12:43:00.000Z

my first app, a Mac menu bar utility to remind you to blink more. any feedback would be much appreciated. or make it your own and share :)

thisislife2 1 year ago |

1. Good move to protect yourself as a developer and making the app easily available outside the App Store. 2. Consider supporting older macOS versions. 3. Have a look at https://workrave.org/ and https://www.dejal.com/timeout/ for additional feature consideration (competition research). (Tip: Workrave is better, even if TimeOut looks nicer - focus more on that).

Remy42 1 year ago | |

wow thank you for all the feedback, appreciate you!! I’m on it

pcdoodle 1 year ago |

Very cool idea. This would also be kind of cool to have a timer that would remind you to look at something in the distance every 5 to 10 minutes to keep your focus range exercise while using computer.

Remy42 1 year ago | |

Thanks for the feedback. I am working on this feature!

pimlottc 1 year ago |

Is this based on any existing research? I would think your body already blinks enough as needed to keep your eyes from drying out.

thisislife2 1 year ago | |

Not OP, but apparently apart from reduced blinking (when watching a screen), there is also something called as incomplete blinking happening ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31152804/ ). More here - https://theconversation.com/screen-time-can-seriously-harm-y... .

opan 1 year ago |

I don't see a LICENSE file. Do you intend to choose a license?

https://choosealicense.com/

Remy42 1 year ago | |

just added. this my first app. thanks for the feedback!

cududa 1 year ago |

Really neat -- going to poke around with this!

MelodyUwU 1 year ago |

macos sonoma is a very high requirement...

Remy42 1 year ago | |

I used SwiftUI :/

MelodyUwU 1 year ago | | |

the official apple documentation [0] claims it is available to all macos systems 10.15 upwards, though

[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui

Remy42 1 year ago | | |

I added a new .dmg for Ventura+ install. Let me know how it goes. You can also clone and build yourself if you'd like

MelodyUwU 1 year ago | | |

ah no, i cant actually do that, my osx is 10.6 snow leopard, would be hard to do it :) either way supporting as many versions of macos as possible is always good riddance

MichaelTheGeek 1 year ago |

Good idea.