2020-11-18
Iโve been interested in trying regular short breaks from the screen, but in practice scheduling them can be tricky. Ideally break reminders should be flexible enough that I can take a minute or two to wrap up a task, but persistent enough that I canโt forget them.
The reminder mechanism that Iโve found the most helpful has been to simply turn the screen grayscale, a technique Iโve borrowed from Androidโs Digital Wellbeing features, popularly used for countering screen addiction.
This turned out to be easy to implement as a GNOME Shell extension, from which itโs simple to leverage Mutter's robust idle monitor and built-in screen effects.
Be Nice to Brain turns the screen grayscale until a break is taken, and plays a soft sound effect when itโs time to return.