Break reminders that stay out of your way during meetings —
and take over the whole screen when it’s time to rest.
$ brew install --cask yuseferi/pausa/pausa
Free & open source · Apple silicon & Intel · no account, no telemetry
30-second demo coming soon
Add assets/demo.mp4 or assets/demo.gif — see the comment in index.html.
Most break reminders fire at the wrong moment and are easy to ignore. Pausa fixes both.
In a call, playing media, or on a muted video tab? The countdown pauses automatically and resumes when you’re free — meeting time never counts toward your next break.
A native fullscreen panel covers fullscreen Spaces and every monitor, then returns focus to exactly where you were. No fragile “always on top” windows.
Breaks only fire on the days and times you choose, and real away-from-keyboard time counts as a natural break so you aren’t nagged after a walk.
No account, no telemetry, and no automatic network calls — the only request is the update check you trigger. Busy detection runs locally on your Mac. Read more.
Microphone, Now Playing (media playback), and frontmost browser video/meeting pages — including muted YouTube and Google Meet.
Native NSPanel breaks above fullscreen apps, on all monitors or just the active one, fullscreen or compact.
Pick the days and times breaks may fire. Outside them, Pausa stays quiet.
Time away from the keyboard is credited, so stepping out doesn’t leave you “behind schedule”.
Eye, stretch, movement and breathing prompts, with a guided breathing exercise on long breaks.
A small, responsive status item with a live countdown. Stays out of your Dock and out of your way.
No. It uses public system APIs plus a short, read-only AppleScript lookup for the frontmost browser’s active tab URL. It never records your screen or keystrokes.
No. There is no telemetry. Pausa makes no automatic network requests; the only one is the update check you trigger.
No. Microphone use auto-pauses the schedule, and the countdown resumes when the call ends.
Pausa isn’t notarized yet, so macOS blocks the first launch. Run
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/pausa.app, or
right-click the app in Finder → Open. Notarization needs a paid
Apple Developer account and is on the roadmap.
Yes. Break overlays are native panels rendered above fullscreen Spaces, and can cover every monitor.
Homebrew is recommended. Prefer a direct download? Grab the latest release.
brew install --cask yuseferi/pausa/pausa
Pausa isn’t notarized yet, so macOS blocks the first launch. Run this once after installing (or right-click the app in Finder → Open):
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/pausa.app