Recess is a gentle break coach for macOS that lives in your menu bar and nudges you to take eye-rest and body-stretch breaks on the cadence your body needs.
Key Features:
- Two Independent Timers — Run eye breaks and body breaks on separate cadences
- Smart Presets — Choose from Light to Strict presets with skip penalties
- Away Detection — Step away long enough and it automatically counts as your break
- Focus Aware — Breaks wait during Focus mode, calls, and the apps you name
- Work Hours — Set your work hours so it stays quiet outside them
- Flexible Pausing — Pause for 30 minutes, an hour, or until tomorrow
- Full-Screen Overlays — A calm guided overlay covers every display when a break is due
- Weekly Reports — 60-day log and weekly reports available from the menu bar
How It Works:
Set two cadences — one for eye breaks, one for body breaks — then pick a preset, dial in custom intervals, and say which hours they run in. Recess runs both timers quietly from your menu bar. Time away from the desk counts as a break, and breaks wait during Focus, calls, and the apps you name. A countdown warns you a few seconds ahead, then a calm overlay covers every display until the break is over.
Recess is free with a pay-what-you-want lifetime license (suggested $3.99). Available directly from the developer, the Mac App Store, Lemon Squeezy, and Gumroad.
