We spend so much time on our devices. Probably the majority of
the time that we are awake and get so much immersed into using
them such that we may forget to blink. I recently found an app
called Pomy which is like a Pomodoro for our eye health.
It is an app that is developed to help us prevent eye strain,
inspired by the 20-20-20 rule by optometrists. This rule
recommends that after you have finished a session of 20
minutes on your screen, take a 20-second break and look 20 ft,
or 6 meters away for 20 seconds.
After you install it, you can start it the timer and you can
also see how far have you made in the session by seeing the
number of minutes left until the end of the session on your
Menu. After a session is done, your screen blacks out, serving
as a reminder for you to look somewhere else and not on your
screen.
When your computer goes asleep or back on, Pomy will stop and
resume itself where it left off.
It comes with 5 colors, but you can also choose custom colors
as you like. You can see these when you have this widget open
showing on top of the currently active window.
Although this may sound as a really routine to incorporate in
your daily life, here comes the advice from the developer:
Please don’t completely rely on Pomy as it won’t completely prevent eye strain.
Looking at screens for a long period of time is already bad
itself.
If you hit 2-3+ cycles of the focus timer, shutdown the
computer and go for a proper break, treat yourself!
It is available for Mac and Windows. You can learn more about
it here.