NEED A BREAK! is an open source application intended to help you take care of your health while you work on a computer. It will encourage you to regularly have a break in order to avoid health issues like musculoskeletal disorders, headaches or eye strain.

I have made it for my personal usage and personaly use it every day at work and it helps me to not sit for too long. So I decided to share it because maybe it could be useful to someone else.

You will be notified a minute before lockdown:

When it is time to have a break a countdown will appear. The screen will be locked when it reaches 0:

You can check that the application is running thanks to the task bar icon. Hover the mouse over the icon and you'll see useful information like time remaining before lockdown and today's screen time:

You can display the application menu by clicking on the coffee cup icon in the taskbar:

The settings window let you choose how long the application will wait before lockdown:

You can find this documentation on my github page: https://bnobo.github.io/needabreak/

You can install the latest version from the Microsoft Store

If you prefer, you can download the version you want to install from the Releases page

Starting with version 3.x you'll need Windows 10 minimum. If you have an older system, you should download a previous version from the Releases page. The latest version before 3.x was 2.3. Please note that previous versions won't benefit from new functionnalities and security updates. You should upgrade your system to benefit from the latest version.

The project is a WPF application targeting .NET 8. All you need is a copy of Visual Studio Community in order to build it. Once started, the application creates a coffee cup icon in the task bar to manifest its presence and permits user to interact with it. Just click on the coffee cup to open the application menu.

I'm sure this application could be improved in many ways and I would be happy to receive some help in doing so. If you want to contribute to this project, please read contributing.md file.

Every kind of contribution is welcome, it includes, but is not limited to:

• Add a new language translations
• Improve existing translations
• Improve design
• Fix typos
• Fix bugs
• Test to find issues
• Add new functionalities

The log file of the application can be found under %TEMP%\NeedABreak Logs folder.

Sometimes it is usefull to vary user settings values during debug. In order to easily locate the user settings file of the application, its path is logged when the app starts in debug mode. Open the log file and search for User settings path. You should see a line similar to:

2024-04-20 08:41:39,206 [1] DEBUG - NeedABreak.App User settings path = C:\Users\your_name\AppData\Local\NeedABreak\NeedABreak_Url_zfnovop1ow4emdxnmewxhry05gwrornw\3.0.3.0\user.config

Open the user.config file and change settings values as needed.

Be careful while editing this XML file. If you break it, the application won't start anymore. You should make a backup copy before editing it. In case you accidentally broke it, just delete the user.config file and restart the application. The file will be restored with default values.

Use of P/Invoke to lock workstation:

[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool LockWorkStation();

Use of P/Invoke to check current user notification state in order to automatically suspend the application if a notification would not be appropriate:

[DllImport("shell32.dll")]
static extern int SHQueryUserNotificationStte(outUserNotificationStateuserNotificationState);

Use of P/Invoke to ensure user is idle before poping-up the countdown window:

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern bool GetLastInputInfo(ref LASTINPUTINFO plii);

[DllImport("user32.dll")]		
static extern ushort GetAsyncKeyState(ushort virtualKeyCode);

Use of system events to detect session switch:

Microsoft.Win32.SystemEvents.SessionSwitch += SystemEvents_SessionSwitch;

Use of Mutex class to prevent application from beeing launched twice:

mutex = new System.Threading.Mutex(false, "Local\\NeedABreakInstance");
if (!mutex.WaitOne(0, false))
{
    Logger.Info("Application already running");
    Current.Shutdown();
    return;
}

Use of custom markup extension to handle translations in XAML files like this:

<TextBlock Margin="0 210 0 0"
           Text="{utils:TextResource warranty}" />

Use of Adorner class to surround selected tile on the settings window.

Use of StartupTask class in order to run the application at Windows Startup.

The manifest has to be manually edited to add the startup task extension:

[...]
xmlns:desktop="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/desktop/windows10"
[...]
<Applications>
    <Application Id="App"
        [...]
        <Extensions>
            <!-- Desktop Bridge-->
            <desktop:Extension
              Category="windows.startupTask"
              Executable="NeedABreak\NeedABreak.exe"
              EntryPoint="Windows.FullTrustApplication">
              <desktop:StartupTask
                  TaskId="NeedABreak.StartupTask"
                  Enabled="true"
                  DisplayName="NEED A BREAK!" />
            </desktop:Extension>
        </Extensions>
    </Application>
</Applications>

The csproj file has to target Windows 10:

<TargetFramework>net8.0-windows10.0.18362.0</TargetFramework>

And then it is possible to make use of the StartupTask class:

StartupTask startupTask = await StartupTask.GetAsync("NeedABreak.StartupTask");
StartupTaskState newState = await startupTask.RequestEnableAsync();