README.md trunk

英文原文正文为项目原始 README（英文），本站后续会翻译为中文，当前仅剔除图片与无关章节并统一排版。

Stretchly

The break time reminder app

Stretchly is a cross-platform Electron app that reminds you to take breaks when working on your computer.

安装

The latest official installers and portable versions for macOS, Windows and Linux can be found at Github Releases page. For supported versions of your OS check Electron's supported versions. Read on for details of specific OSes.

macOS

Requires macOS Ventura (13) or later.

It is recommended to install Stretchly with Homebrew tap by running the following command. See Application Signing for details.

brew install --cask hovancik/stretchly/stretchly

Note for macOS users: Homebrew recently disabled the --no-quarantine flag. As a result, macOS Gatekeeper may block the app on its first launch, showing an "unidentified developer" warning. To bypass this, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway next to the Stretchly alert. Alternatively, locate the app in Finder, Control-click (or Right-click) its icon, and select Open.

When upgrading, run the following command. Don't forget to Quit Stretchly, first.

brew upgrade --cask hovancik/stretchly/stretchly

To uninstall:

brew uninstall --cask hovancik/stretchly/stretchly
brew untap hovancik/stretchly

Note: A stretchly cask also exists in the default homebrew/cask tap. It is deprecated and scheduled to be disabled on September 1, 2026 because the app is unsigned and fails Homebrew's Gatekeeper check. Until then, the bare name stretchly is ambiguous — always use the fully qualified hovancik/stretchly/stretchly to get this tap's version.

If you're using Alfred or Raycast on macOS you can use this Alfred Workflow or Raycast Extension to interact with Stretchly.

Application Signing

Stretchly is only ad-hoc signed (due to its costs and me not owning supported Apple device) so you will need to use a workaround for the first run. The workaround depends on if you're running an Intel or Apple Silicon chip.

Intel Chips: Open a Mac app from an unidentified developer.
Apple Chips: Open a terminal and run this command:

sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Stretchly.app

Not sure which chip your computer has? Here's how to tell.

Windows

You can also install Stretchly with Chocolatey by running the following command from the command line or from PowerShell:

choco install stretchly

To update:

choco upgrade stretchly

Stretchly is also available in Microsoft's winget. You can install it by running:

winget install -e --id Stretchly.Stretchly

Stretchly can be also found at official Microsoft Store.

You can install Stretchly for all users silently by running this as administrator:

installer.exe /S /allusers

Linux / Portable

For portable versions and for Linux installers, head to Github Releases page. The most widely used distributions should be covered.

Stretchly is also available in some of the Linux stores:

For Debian/Ubuntu and derivates you could also try this apt repository: deb [trusted=yes] https://apt.fury.io/hovancik/ /.

Linux note

Please see http://electron.atom.io/docs/api/tray/ for Electron's Tray Linux specifics.

For Natural breaks, you might need some packages too (libxss-dev).

If Stretchly is not starting, you might need to run:

sudo sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1
sudo sysctl -w kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0

Read more here. Depending on your distro, you probably want to do something similar to this, so the preferences are kept after reboot: Add kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1 and kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0 to /etc/sysctl.d/00-local-userns.conf and reboot.

If you're on Wayland and you would like to be able to monitor idle time, you'll need to add your user to input group, with sudo gpasswd --add $USER input (depending on your distro) and logout/login to take an effect.

Running from source

To run Stretchly from source you will need Node.js, ideally the one specified in package.json. Clone the repo, run npm install and then simply run npm start to start Stretchly.

Custom installer

You can create a custom installer by running npm run pack or npm run dist after npm install --no-save.

默认行为

When you run Stretchly for the first time, you are presented with a Welcome window that allows you to change the language, review the preferences, view the online tutorial or simply continue with the default preferences.

Stretchly itself lives in your tray, only displaying a reminder window from time to time, which contains an idea for a break.

By default, there is a 20 second Mini break every 10 minutes and a 5 minute Long break every 30 minutes (after 2 Mini breaks).

You'll be notified 10 seconds before a Mini break (and 30 seconds before a Long break) so that you can prepare to pause your work.

When a break starts, you can postpone it once for 2 minutes (Mini breaks) or 5 minutes (Long breaks). Then, after a specific time interval passes, you can skip the break. Both actions are available by clicking on the link at the bottom of window or by using the Ctrl/Cmd + X keyboard shortcut.

Clicking the Stretchly icon in your tray area will display the current status of breaks, provide menu items with extra functionality, and link to the Preferences.

Stretchly is monitoring your idle time, so when you are idle for 5 minutes, breaks will be paused until you return.

Stretchly is also monitoring Do Not Disturb mode, so breaks are paused when DnD mode is On.

Stretchly follows the theme of your system and is also available in dark mode.

Interact with stretchly from command line

When a Stretchly instance is running, the stretchly command can be use to interact with it from the command line.

The regular Windows installer adds stretchly to PATH, so commands can be run from a new terminal without specifying the full executable path.

Type stretchly help to get a list of all commands and options available as well as some examples.

偏好设置

Most of the preferences can be customized by clicking on the "Preferences" item in the tray menu. (On Windows, to open Preferences, you can also double-click on the tray icon.)

Preferences are divided into multiple categories and you are encouraged to take some time to make Stretchly your own by customizing them.

You can also Restore the defaults to return to the default preferences state.

高级偏好设置

While the most of the preferences can be edited via the app, some options and values are not available to make the app easy to understand and setup.

All preferences are saved in a JSON file, so you can set Stretchly in the way you need. Use the Ctrl/Cmd + D shortcut while viewing the About section of Preferences, to show debug info and display a clickable link to the preferences file.

It's recommended to Quit Stretchly before editing the preferences file.

To make sure that all works as expected, it's always good idea to check that format of the preferences file is correct, ie. by using jsonformatter.

After you make changes to preferences files, some of the values being shown in Preferences or elsewhere might show incorrect value, as the UI is expecting specific values and is not handling cases where user makes manual changes to preferences file.

Some of the extra preferences are available in Contributor Preferences for Contributors. Those are marked by badge.

Preferences marked with might not work correctly and might break Stretchly. Use at own risk.

Note: Before 1.0, Mini breaks and Long breaks were called Microbreaks and Breaks, respectively. To keep the upgrade smooth they still use that name in preferences file and in code.

Preferences editable in the app

Here are the preferences editable via the app. If values in the app does not suite your style, you could edit them maually:

microbreakDuration - duration of Mini break (ms)
microbreakInterval - interval of Mini break (ms)
breakDuration - duration of Long break (ms)
breakInterval - interval of Long break (Mini breaks)
breakNotification - show notification before Mini break
microbreakNotification - show notification before Long break
microbreak - enable Mini breaks
break - enable Long breaks
microbreakStrictMode - enable strict mode for Mini breaks
breakStrictMode - enable strict mode for Long breaks
mainColor - theme color code (for Long breaks),
miniBreakColor - theme color code (for Mini breaks),
transparentMode - show break windows as transparent
longBreakAudio - sound theme name (for Long breaks)
miniBreakAudio - sound theme name (for Mini breaks)
fullscreen - show breaks in fullscreen mode
ideas - show break ideas
naturalBreaks - monitor idle time
allScreens - show breaks on all screens
language - language
useMonochromeTrayIcon - use monochrome icon
trayIconStyle - icon style for menubar: default, time to break, or progress to break
silentNotifications - enable sounds
monitorDnd - monitor DND mode
checkNewVersion - check for new versions

Editing break ideas

In the preferences file, change useIdeasFromSettings: false, to useIdeasFromSettings: true, and edit breakIdeas and microbreakIdeas.

Note that when a new Stretchly version with new break ideas is out, your custom ideas will not be overwritten. You can reset break ideas to the latest defaults when you "Restore defaults" from Preferences window.

Using HTML in break ideas

You can use simple HTML formatting in custom break ideas to enhance their appearance:

Allowed HTML elements:

<a> - links (only https:// and mailto: URLs are allowed)
<b> - bold text
<i> - italic text
<br> - line breaks
<p> - paragraphs
<h1>, <h2>, <h3> - headings
`` - local images (filenames only, see below)

Using links:

"breakIdeas": [
  {
    "data": ["<b>Stretch Time!</b>", "Try this <a href=\"https://example.com/stretch\">stretching routine</a>"],
    "enabled": true
  }
]

Using local images:

Place your images in the images folder inside Stretchly's user data directory (see Preferences → About → Debug info for the exact location). Then reference them by filename only:

"breakIdeas": [
  {
    "data": ["<b>Desk Yoga</b>", "Try this pose: "],
    "enabled": true
  }
]

Supported image formats: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF. Only images from the local images folder are allowed - remote URLs will be blocked for security.

Stretchly sanitizes all HTML to keep break windows secure by removing any unsupported tags or unsafe content.

Editing sunrise time to pause breaks until morning

In the preferences file you can set the morningHour setting to pause until that hour today or the next day Otherwise, you can set morningHour: "sunrise" and set posLatitude, posLongitude in preferences to pause until the actual sunrise in your area. E.g. if you live in Boston you would set: morningHour: "sunrise", posLatitude: 42.3, posLongitude: 71

Different sound for Mini and Long breaks

To play different sound for Mini breaks, set miniBreakAudio to desired value (crystal-glass, silence, tic-toc, wind-chime).

Different color theme for Mini and Long breaks

To have different theme for Mini breaks, set miniBreakColor to desired value, ie #123456.

Do Not Disturb check interval

In the preferences file, set monitorDndCheckInterval in milliseconds: how often Do Not Disturb status is checked. A higher number means lower CPU and energy usage, but slightly less responsive detection. On macOS and Linux this check can be relatively expensive, so increasing it can noticeably lower energy usage. Default value is 2000 which is 2 seconds.

Postpone/finish break shortcut

In the preferences file, set endBreakShortcut to your preferred value. We do not validate this input, so please check Electron's documentation for available values for key and modifier. When a given accelerator is already taken by other applications, this call will silently fail. This behavior is intended by operating systems, since they don't want applications to fight for global shortcuts.

If you'd like to disable the shortcut, set value to empty string "".

Default value is CmdOrCtrl+X.

Manual finish break mode

If you want breaks to wait for you to finish them manually instead of automatically when the countdown reaches zero, set:

"miniBreakManualFinish": true,
"longBreakManualFinish": true

Once enabled, the break behaves normally until it reaches 100%, then the window switches to showing elapsed time since the break started. You must press the Finish button or use the endBreakShortcut to close the break.

Toggle breaks shortcut

Toggling between Pause breaks and running breaks.

In the preferences file, set pauseBreaksToggleShortcut to your preferred value. We do not validate this input, so please check Electron's documentation for available values for key and modifier. When a given accelerator is already taken by other applications, this call will silently fail. This behavior is intended by operating systems, since they don't want applications to fight for global shortcuts.

If you'd like to disable the shortcut, set value to empty string "". That's the default value as well.

Pause breaks for duration shortcuts

You can also set shortcuts to pause breaks for a specific duration by modifying the following values in the preferences file:

pauseBreaksFor30MinutesShortcut
pauseBreaksFor1HourShortcut
pauseBreaksFor2HoursShortcut
pauseBreaksFor5HoursShortcut
pauseBreaksUntilMorningShortcut

If you'd like to disable the shortcuts, set value to empty string "". That's the default value as well.

Skip to the next break shortcut

In the preferences file, set skipToNextScheduledBreakShortcut, skipToNextMiniBreakShortcut, skipToNextLongBreakShortcut to your preferred value. We do not validate this input, so please check Electron's documentation for available values for key and modifier. When a given accelerator is already taken by other applications, this call will silently fail. This behavior is intended by operating systems, since they don't want applications to fight for global shortcuts.

If you'd like to disable the shortcut, set value to empty string "". That's the default value as well.

Reset breaks shortcut

In the preferences file, set resetBreaksShortcut to your preferred value. We do not validate this input, so please check Electron's documentation for available values for key and modifier. When a given accelerator is already taken by other applications, this call will silently fail. This behavior is intended by operating systems, since they don't want applications to fight for global shortcuts.

If you'd like to disable the shortcut, set value to empty string "". That's the default value as well.

Break window color

In the preferences file, change mainColor to whatever color you like.

Show break countdown only on one screen

By default, when breaks are shown on all screens (allScreens: true), the countdown and break idea are shown on every screen. If you'd rather keep the other screens blanked and show the countdown and idea on a single screen only, set breakContentScreen in the preferences file to one of:

"all" - show the content on all screens (default)
"primary" - show the content only on the primary screen
"cursor" - show the content only on the screen where the cursor is when the break starts
a screen index (e.g. 0, 1) - show the content only on that screen

This option has no effect when allScreens is false or when showBreaksAsRegularWindows is true. Invalid values fall back to "all".

Pause/resume breaks only when specific command is running

By editing appExclusions in preferences file, you can automatically control when Stretchly breaks are paused.

If you want Stretchly to be paused when specific apps are running, you could have this value (breaks are paused when Skype or Atom are running):

Linux

"appExclusions": [
    {
        "rule": "pause",
        "active": true,
        "commands": [
            "/usr/share/skypeforlinux/skypeforlinux",
            "atom"
        ]
    }
]

Windows

"appExclusions": [
    {
        "rule": "pause",
        "active": true,
        "commands": [
            "librewolf.exe",
            "masseffectlauncher.exe"
        ]
    }
]

If you want Stretchly to be running when specific apps are as well, you could have this value (breaks are paused when Skype or Atom are not running):

Linux

"appExclusions": [
    {
        "rule": "resume",
        "active": true,
        "commands": [
            "/usr/share/skypeforlinux/skypeforlinux",
            "atom"
        ]
    }
]

Windows

"appExclusions": [
    {
        "rule": "resume",
        "active": true,
        "commands": [
            "librewolf.exe",
            "masseffectlauncher.exe"
        ]
    }
]

You can specify multiple values, (as appExclusions is array) and Stretchly will take the first one that is marked as "active": true. Multiple commands can be specified as well. Commands should be case sensitive, but seems like this is not consistent across platforms. Therefore, sometimes, going all lowercase might be needed (this was noticed on Windows). Commands can also be substrings, meaning a rule containing "exe" will trigger when there's any running processes that contains "exe" in its name or cmd properties.

For Windows, note that paths not specified. This is because on Windows, the API we're using only checks the names of processes being run, which in the vast majority of cases is "process_name.exe". If you try to specify paths, it will not work.

You can also specify appExclusionsCheckInterval in milliseconds: lower number means more often checks, but also higher CPU usage. Default value is 2000 which is 2 seconds.

Pause breaks on Suspend/Lock

If you don't want to reset breaks once system is back from Suspend/Lock, set pauseForSuspendOrLock to false.

Monitor to show breaks on

In case you have disabled showing of breaks on all monitors, you can specify which one should contain the break window. Set screen value to one of the following:

"primary" - primary monitor as given by OS
"cursor" - monitor where there is cursor
"0" (or 0), "1", "2" etc, where "0" is the first monitor returned by OS and so forth

Break Health Mode

Inspired by the screen-edge vignette used in video games to indicate low health, this mode adds a visual indicator around the edges of your break screen. The effect starts subtle and grows more intense each time you skip or postpone a break, and fades back down when you let breaks complete naturally. To enable it, set breakHealthMode to true.

Show tray menu in Strict Mode

If you want to show tray menu even while in Strict mode, set showTrayMenuInStrictMode to true.

Show custom message in Preferences

If you want to show custom message in Preferences, set customPreferencesMessage to string of your liking.