Rest For Mac

As you may already know, sitting down in front of the computer for hours on end without taking a break poses great danger to our health. For this reason, a lot of utilities have been designed to remind you to take a break after a pre-defined or custom period of time.

Rest is a lightweight macOS application for alerting you to take a break from your work, and it comes with a very simple concept: it implements a user-friendly way to set recurrent reminders with custom messages and different sounds.

Moreover, the application allows you to configure work periods, break periods and postpone times. For instance, the default work period is 1 hour and the break period is 5 minutes.

Once you decide to take a break, you will be able to stretch, walk around or grab something from the kitchen, thus making sure that your body won't be affected by sitting down too much. Thanks to Rest's simple status bar menu item, you can also effortlessly pause and start the timer, with a simple mouse click.

Rest's postpone function allows you to defer the timer with a specified amount of time, which can be 1, 5, 10 minutes or more. This feature is also accessible via the menu bar item, where you can use the 1 minute or 5 minute options or a custom option set in the app’s preferences.

When the work or break period is over, a popup will be displayed on your screen, and you can set up the app to display a user-defined message in the popup window. Also, the background color of this window can be changed and, along with the popup, Rest is also able to play an optional sound that can also be customized from the Settings dialog.

Rest's only downside is the fact that it doesn't feature an e-mail notification engine, a feature that would make it an indispensable tool even for users that aren't working in front of their Macs.

On the whole, Rest provides you with an efficient break reminder alternative, designed to display the remaining time in your Mac's menu bar and to alert you automatically when you have to take a break or to start work again with customizable alerts.