Skopia 1.3.0 — Appearance Settings

Version 1.3.0 adds two things: control over how the reminder looks, and a way to know a rest break has ended without watching its countdown.

If you never open the new tab, the reminder looks exactly as it did in 1.2.0. The one change you will notice is the chime at the end of a rest break — and it has its own switch.

New: the Appearance tab

A new tab in Preferences → Appearance holds six settings.

One color, everywhere

The accent you pick is not limited to the reminder. It repaints the menu bar icon, the badge and button in the menu bar popover, every tab in Preferences, and the welcome window. Yellow stays the default.

Every color stays readable

The reminder always uses exactly the color you pick. Two places correct it, and only when they have to:

• The dark popover. A very dark color would vanish against the near-black button and the eye of the tower icon. There, Skopia lightens it just enough to reach a 3:1 contrast ratio — the usual minimum for interface elements.
• The menu bar. It can be light or dark. A very dark color is lightened on a dark menu bar, and the white preset is darkened on a light one — only as far as the default yellow. No other preset is ever changed.

A preview that is the real thing

The Preview button fires the actual reminder for your current style, with your current settings — not a picture of it. Change the size, press Preview, and see the result straight away instead of waiting for the next reminder.

New: a chime when a rest break ends

The 20-20-20 and palming breaks show a countdown. Until now, the only way to know a break was over was to watch it — awkward when the point of 20-20-20 is to look away from the screen, and impossible during palming, when your eyes are closed.

Now a short chime plays when a break runs to the end. It is a different sound from the blink reminder's, so you can tell the two apart without looking.

• Only when the break finishes. Dismiss it early, or have it cut short by an automatic pause or a locked screen, and it stays silent.
• On by default. Switch it off in Preferences → Rest, under “Sound at the end of a session”.

Fixed

• A faint rectangle could appear around the eye in the center of the screen. The glow around the eye was being cut off at the edge of its window; the window is now large enough for the glow to fade out completely.

Unchanged in 1.3.0

• Three reminder styles — subtle overlay, sound only, and the eye in the center of the screen
• Automatic pause on calls, screen recordings, video playback, deep focus apps and full screen — see what 1.2.0 added
• Rest exercises — 20-20-20 every 20 minutes, palming every 60 minutes, each independently switchable
• Global pause and resume with ⌥⌘P
• No permission prompts, no camera, no account
• macOS 13.5 Ventura and later

Getting it

1.3.0 is a free update for everyone who already owns Skopia. It arrives automatically through the Mac App Store, and the direct download updates itself.

The pricing commitment is 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 something about the reminder still gets in your way, tell us what you see and when — [email protected] reaches the person who builds it.