Reading and calls need a separate check
Input activity cannot tell whether you are watching a screen without touching the mouse. StopBurnout does not inspect your calendar or meeting app. Passive screen use can count as idle time after the configured threshold.
Use planned breaks around meetings for those periods. If a break seems late, check the dashboard and the Windows troubleshooting guide.
In short
- Input, not elapsed time. Work time advances while your last input remains within the idle threshold.
- Time away rewinds it. Recovery is credited back; a long enough absence resets the session.
- One value is read. How long ago your last input was — never what you typed.
The problem with wall-clock timers
A fixed 50-minute timer assumes every minute since you started is a minute of screen work. Real days do not look like that. You take a call and listen for half an hour. You read a printed page. You go to the kitchen, get pulled into a conversation, and come back forty minutes later.
A wall-clock timer greets you with a mandatory break you have already taken. Do that a few times and you learn to distrust the app — and once you're routinely dismissing a break because it's wrong, you'll dismiss the one that's right. Unfair timing is the mechanism by which strict break apps get uninstalled.
The inverse failure matters too. If the timer keeps running while you're away, it eventually fires during your lunch, "completes" a break you never saw, and hands you a fresh session at the exact moment you sit back down for another three-hour stretch.
Set your work interval and break duration
In Settings, choose the work limit, break length, warning time and idle threshold. The defaults are 60 minutes of work, a 10-minute break, a 5-minute warning and a 2-minute idle threshold. These are configurable starting points, not a medical recommendation. Choose Notification mode for a nudge or a locked mode for full-screen breaks.
How the activity timer works
- The countdown follows recent input. Keyboard and mouse activity advance the work session. Once you pass the idle threshold, it pauses.
- Idle time is credited as recovery. The countdown to your next break literally goes back up while you're away — the longer the absence, the more session you get back.
- A long absence resets the session. Lunch counts as the break it actually was, so you don't get interrupted five minutes after returning.
- The break end time is saved on disk. Reopening the app before the saved end time resumes the remaining break. Time asleep or powered off still passes toward that end time.
That last point is deliberately unforgiving in the other direction: rebooting is a known way people escape strict break apps, and a timer that lives only in memory rewards it.
What it reads — and what it doesn't
The timer needs exactly one fact: how long ago the last input event happened. Windows exposes that directly. StopBurnout does not capture keystrokes, read window titles, categorise applications, log websites or take screenshots — not as a policy toggle, but because none of that is required to answer "are you still working?"
The practical consequence is that break tracking runs offline with no account and no telemetry; activation and periodic update checks use the internet, and your history stays in a file on your disk. That is covered in more detail on the local-only data page.
A timer you can actually trust
Activity-aware timing, enforced breaks on every monitor, with break history stored locally. Free for 14 days.
Activity timing vs the alternatives
| Approach | What advances the timer | Fails when |
|---|---|---|
| Pomodoro timer | You start it manually | You forget to start it, or don't stop when it ends |
| Wall-clock interval | Time since the app launched | Meetings, calls and lunches trigger breaks you already took |
| Activity-based | Real keyboard and mouse input | You work on a second device the app can't see |
Every approach has a blind spot; activity timing's is that it only knows about this machine. If you routinely work from a laptop and a desktop at once, no single-machine timer will see your full day. For the more general comparison of timer philosophies, see Pomodoro vs a break enforcer and the research summary in ultradian rhythms and work cycles.
Common questions
Does a meeting count as work time?
Not once you pass the idle threshold. Listening on a call without touching the machine does not push you toward a break. If you're taking notes throughout, that input does count — you are using the screen.
Does the app record what I type?
No. It reads one value from Windows: how long ago the last input event occurred. No keystrokes, window titles, applications or websites are captured.
What happens if I take a long lunch?
Time away is credited back as recovery, so the countdown goes back up while you rest, and a long enough absence resets the session outright.
Does the timer survive a restart or sleep?
Yes. Session state and the break end time are saved locally. Reopening before the end time resumes the remaining break; time asleep or powered off still counts toward that time.
Can I change the idle threshold?
Yes, along with work and break lengths. In the locked protection levels those settings sit behind your password, so they can't be loosened mid-session.