Skopia 1.2.0 — Pause Conditions

Version 1.2.0 is a single feature done thoroughly: Skopia now knows when it should not interrupt you.

Everything else in the app is unchanged. If reminders were never landing at a bad moment for you, this update will be invisible, which is the intended outcome.

New: pause conditions

Five situations now suspend reminders automatically. Each can be switched on or off individually in Preferences → Pause.

Why video playback is off by default: it works by reading which processes are keeping your display awake. Video players do that — but so do Amphetamine and caffeinate, permanently. If it were on by default, anyone using those tools would find Skopia silently paused forever. Turn it on if you do not use them.

How it behaves

• Counters freeze, they do not skip. The blink countdown and both rest timers stop where they are and resume from that value. You will not come off an hour-long call to three reminders at once.
• A visible rest overlay is dismissed. If a break window is already on screen when a call starts, it disappears immediately.
• The menu bar says why. When Skopia suspends, it shows the active condition and the app behind it, so a quiet app never looks like a broken one.
• Video and recording clear slowly on purpose. They need about six seconds of clear readings before reminders resume, so the gap between two clips does not cause a flicker.
• Manual pause still wins. Pausing by hand clears every active condition; resuming recomputes them on the next tick.
• Latency depends on the condition. Full screen and focus apps suspend within about three seconds. A call takes up to about ten, because the microphone signal is confirmed over several readings so a notification sound is never mistaken for a meeting. Video playback takes about eight.

Permissions: still none

Every one of the five conditions is detected through public, read-only system APIs that return metadata only. Skopia requests no camera access, no microphone permission, no screen recording permission and no accessibility access, and it runs inside the App Sandbox.

Call detection reads which process holds the microphone, never the audio. Full screen reads window geometry and owner names, never window titles. Screen recording reads those plus the display-sleep assertion list. Video playback reads the same power assertion list that pmset -g assertions prints.

There is no network activity, no account and no analytics. Everything Skopia knows stays on your Mac. The detail on how Skopia detects each condition without permissions is written up separately, along with the reasoning behind the design rules.

Unchanged in 1.2.0

• Three reminder styles — subtle overlay, sound only, and the eye in the centre of the screen
• Rest exercises — 20-20-20 every 20 minutes, palming every 60 minutes, each independently switchable
• Optional countdown in the menu bar
• Global pause and resume with ⌥⌘P
• macOS 13.5 Ventura and later

Getting it

1.2.0 is a free update for everyone who already owns Skopia. It arrives automatically through the Mac App Store, or as a direct download.

The pricing commitment is also unchanged and worth repeating: version 2.0 will be a free upgrade for every 1.x buyer. That is written into our terms, not just stated here.

What is next

Version 2.0 adds optional on-device blink detection using Apple's Vision framework. It will be off by default, it will never upload or store a frame, and the timer-only mode stays a first-class way to use the app permanently.

If a reminder still lands at a bad moment, tell us which app and what you were doing — that is exactly how this release got its list.