In short
- No account. Nothing to sign up for, no email required to use the app.
- No telemetry. No analytics, crash pings or usage reporting.
- Offline breaks. Activation and update checks use the internet. Your break timer and local history do not depend on a connection.
Why this matters for a break app specifically
A tool that watches when you work is, by construction, watching you. The category norm is to send that signal somewhere: a cloud account, a productivity score, an activity feed, sometimes a manager's dashboard. Those products offer something real in exchange — automatic categorisation, cross-device history, team insight — and for some people that trade is worth it.
StopBurnout makes the opposite trade. It keeps break history on your PC and sends no app telemetry. Purchasing and activating a license still requires an email and license information; that is separate from local activity timing.
What it reads, precisely
Windows exposes how long ago the last keyboard or mouse input event occurred. That single number is the entire input to the timer. StopBurnout does not:
- capture keystrokes or their content;
- read window titles;
- record which applications you use;
- log websites, URLs or browser activity;
- take screenshots or webcam images;
- use your location to time breaks.
Those absences are not settings you have to find and switch off. The features that would require them do not exist in the product. More on how the timer uses that one value is on the activity-based timer page.
What it stores, and where
Your settings, session state, daily and weekly break history, the 24-hour timeline and the local log of early unlocks are written to a SQLite database file on your own disk, updated every second so a reboot or crash cannot lose the session.
Because it is an ordinary file, you own the lifecycle: back it up, copy it to another machine, or delete it. Deleting it removes the history permanently — there is no server-side copy to also request the removal of.
Breaks that don't need to know who you are
Enforced full-screen breaks on every monitor, no account, no telemetry, no cloud. Free for 14 days.
When the app uses the internet
Activating a purchased license sends your email, license key and an anonymous machine hash to our server. The app checks for a newer release at startup and every 24 hours, without sending those identifiers in the update request. It does not automatically install updates. Break timing, history and license verification work offline; a failed update check does not interrupt a break. The full app is available during the 14-day trial.
Our privacy policy covers what happens on the website side, where a consent-gated analytics tag does run. The website and the desktop app are separate: declining cookies on this page has no effect on the app, because the app was never reporting anything in the first place.
How this compares
| Data question | Cloud productivity suites | StopBurnout |
|---|---|---|
| Account required | Yes, typically | No |
| Activity metadata collected | Apps, sites, window titles | Time since last input only |
| Where history lives | Provider's servers | A file on your disk |
| Works with no internet | Usually degraded | Fully, after activation |
| Cross-device history | Yes | No — single machine |
| Automatic categorisation and insights | Yes | No |
The bottom two rows are the real cost of this design, and they are not small. If you want your work history to follow you between machines or to be analysed for patterns, a local-only tool is the wrong choice and you should pick one of the cloud products instead.
Common questions
Does StopBurnout work offline?
Break timing and history stay on your PC, with no account or telemetry. License activation and periodic update checks use the internet; breaks continue to work offline.
Do I need to create an account?
No. There is no sign-up and no cloud profile. Settings and history exist only on the machine you installed it on.
What data does it collect?
How long ago your last keyboard or mouse input occurred. No keystrokes, window titles, application names, websites or screenshots, and no analytics or telemetry.
Where is my break history stored?
In a SQLite file on your own disk. Back it up or delete it yourself; deleting it removes the history permanently.
Can my employer see my break data?
Not through StopBurnout — there is no dashboard, team view or reporting endpoint to log into. Anyone with administrative access to the machine itself can of course read files stored on it.
Is it open source?
No. StopBurnout is closed-source commercial software. If verifiable source code is your requirement, Stretchly and Workrave are the honest recommendations.