TakeABreak Gadget

Nowadays, when so many of us have desk jobs that imply a great load of work in front of our computers, taking care of our eyes is more important than ever. TakeABreak is a Windows gadget that wants to make sure you take the right precautions.

The widget takes the shape of a blinking eye and stays in the right upper corner of the screen. This is supposed to remind you to blink and take short breaks from time to time.

The way the app works can be customized from the software’s “Options” menu. Thus, you can set the time elapsed between two breaks (in minutes) and the length of your timeout (in seconds). By default, both values are set at 20.

The value matches the 20-20-20 rule that most ophthalmologists encourage us to respect. According to this, every 20 minutes you must take a 20-second break and look at an object that is farther than 20 feet away. This helps the eye muscles relax.

During the break, the gadget illustrates what you should do – and that’s closing your eyes and letting them rest. Also, the gadget can play a sound to mark the beginning and ending of each pause.

You can adjust the blinking interval. This is supposed to remind you to blink often, as staring at the computer screen for hours can cause eye dryness and even redness.

The eye color for your widget can also be customized. Thus, you can choose one of the available colors – green, blue, purple or brown.

TakeABreak is a nice app that can come in handy if you spend endless hours in front of the computer screen.