What's new
Statistics Window (5013bfe, c2980c6, 4ff13b2)
Sane Break now records break sessions and related events in a local database, and surfaces them in a new Statistics window. You can browse previous weeks, review each day’s timeline, and inspect daily details such as break totals, postpones, and tracked time.
Meeting/Presentation Mode (e7564f8)
You can now pause break reminders until a chosen time with Meeting/Presentation Mode. It is designed for meetings, presentations, and screen sharing, and resumes more gracefully when that period ends.
Focus Mode (d8962b8)
Focus Mode lets you temporarily switch to a separate break schedule for planned deep work. Configure the focus schedule in Settings, then start a focus session from the tray when you want a more intentional, shorter-cycle workflow.
Heads-Up Before Breaks (33421c6)
Breaks can now begin with a small heads-up pill before the actual break starts. It gives you a clearer early signal and lets you start the break immediately if you have already reached a good stopping point.
Reworked Postpone Flow (e7564f8)
Postponing has been redesigned to feel less punitive. Instead of pushing the cost into a big break, postponing now extends the upcoming break and shortens the following work session. This keeps the overall rhythm more regular while still giving you flexibility when you need a little more time.
More Break Window Customization (b063114, 2246c4e, 22f40ce, ac99030)
Break windows are much more configurable in this release. You can use background images, pick colors with a built-in color dialog, and choose how long the tray icon flashes before a break. The flashing pattern has also been reworked to feel more dynamic and noticeable.
Smarter Pause Behavior (a054e70)
Sane Break can now pause automatically when an unknown monitor is connected. This is especially useful for presentations or other situations where you plug into a display you have not marked as trusted yet.
Other Improvements
- Allow disabling big breaks and having small breaks only (9886efc).
- Added
Ctrl+Wsupport for closing the Preferences and Statistics windows (91e6c8c). - Added Italian and Swedish translations, along with broader translation updates (5d4fb6b, c2aa0d4).
- Updated the project to Qt 6.11 (56c2c6a).
Fixes
- Fixed a crash in
WrappedCheckBox::minimumSizeHint(cc7206c). - Improved GNOME-specific window behavior so break overlays appear more reliably (dfc78a0, 5aaf45b).
Installation instructions:
Download x86 version of Windows 10 or newer is supported. Older versions may be supported too.
For Debian-based distributions, there is a notoriously large number of derivatives, and many of them ship old versions of Qt and do not include the latest AppImage version is experimental. It may or may not work on your machine.
macOS
sane-break-macos-x86_64.dmg file if you are using Intel mac, or sane-break-macos-arm64.dmg if you are using ARM chip. Open and install it. macOS 13 or newer are supported.
Windows
sane-break-windows.zip extract it. Put the .exe executable anywhere you like.
sane-break-windows.exe and run it.
Linux
layer-shell-qt. It is impractical to create .deb packages for all of them, so we only provide support for Debian Bookworm and Trixie. (Unfortunately, Ubuntu LTS ships with a very old version of Qt and lacks layer-shell-qt.)
The difference between Bookworm build and Trixie build is the layer shell support. If you are using a Debian-based distro and a Wayland compositor with layer shell protocol support (e.g. KDE Neon), you probably need the Debian Trixie build. Otherwise, the Bookworm build is good to go.
For GNOME users, make sure to enable the GNOME shell extension with:
gnome-extensions enable sane-break@allanchain.github.io