Preventing computer eye strain
Sight Saver
If you work or study from a home office, you probably sit at your computer for hours without a break. Safe Eyes reminds you to take regular breaks and take care of your eyes.
At first glance, working from home seems very convenient. You save time on your commute, money on transportation costs, and avoid overcrowded buses or trains. However, occupational safety often falls by the wayside at home. Most likely, you don't have an ergonomic workstation, and you don't turn away from your screen for a short conversation with a coworker or leave your desk for a meeting on another floor or adjoining building. Instead, your gaze remains fixed on the screen for hours.
At home, the responsibility for taking breaks and evenly spacing out your work falls entirely into your hands. You can use a Pomodoro timer [1] to regularly remind you to take breaks. However, if you continue to stare at the screen during your break – maybe surfing the web or watching a movie – you aren't giving your eyes time to recover.
If you find it difficult to move away from your screen, you may want to add Safe Eyes to your break time routine. An open source application developed for the Gnome desktop, Safe Eyes blacks out and locks your screen for a few seconds for each break (Figure 1), forcing you to actually stop working. Based on recommendations from medical experts, Safe Eyes implements several shorter breaks rather than a few longer ones.
Installation
Safe Eyes is not yet included in the package sources of the popular distributions, but the developers do provide installation instructions for them on both their website [2] and their GitHub page [3]. Safe Eyes offers a PPA for the simplest possible installation on Ubuntu (Listing 1). On Arch Linux, Safe Eyes can be installed using the safeeyes package from the Arch User Repository.
Listing 1
Installation on Ubuntu
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:slgobinath/safeeyes $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install safeeyes
Safe Eyes starts automatically in the background when you log in to your desktop. The startup behavior can be managed in Gnome using the Gnome Tweak Tool (in the application menu below Optimizations) by clicking on the Startup Applications tab. If you select Safe Eyes from the application menu, the program opens its settings. You then have the option of configuring the interval between breaks as well as their length. You can also specify whether breaks can be postponed or skipped (Figure 2).
Respite for the Eyes
In the Breaks tab, you define the breaks, which are usually selected at random. Safe Eyes distinguishes between short breaks of 15 seconds (every 15 minutes) and longer breaks of 60 seconds (every 75 minutes). You can adjust or delete the breaks entered in the standard configuration based on your preferences (Figure 3). If you make a mistake while configuring, you can reenable the application's default settings by clicking on the eye symbol in the top left corner of the application window and selecting the Reset menu item.
In the Plugins tab, you can enable further functions. For example, the Do Not Disturb plugin will not interrupt the display if a program is running in fullscreen mode, for instance, when playing a video (Figure 4). You can also define other programs here that you do not want Safe Eyes to interrupt under any circumstances. The window titles are determined by the command
xprop | grep WM_CLASS

followed by a click on the application in question. However, this does not work with Wayland.
Conclusions
Safe Eyes, the Pomodoro timer, or shifting your screen's color temperature to warm in the evening (Settings | Screens | Night mode in Gnome) can help protect your eyes and enable concentrated work over longer periods of time. However, it is ultimately up to you to avoid looking at your cell phone during scheduled breaks. Instead, get up, move around, and let your eyes wander into the distance.
Infos
- Pomodoro timer: https://pomofocus.io
- Safe Eyes: http://slgobinath.github.io/SafeEyes
- Github repository: https://github.com/slgobinath/SafeEyes
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
News
-
An All-Snap Version of Ubuntu is In The Works
Along with the standard deb version of the open-source operating system, Canonical will release an-all snap version.
-
Mageia 9 Beta 2 Ready for Testing
The latest beta of the popular Mageia distribution now includes the latest kernel and plenty of updated applications.
-
KDE Plasma 6 Looks to Bring Basic HDR Support
The KWin piece of KDE Plasma now has HDR support and color management geared for the 6.0 release.
-
Bodhi Linux 7.0 Beta Ready for Testing
The latest iteration of the Bohdi Linux distribution is now available for those who want to experience what's in store and for testing purposes.
-
Changes Coming to Ubuntu PPA Usage
The way you manage Personal Package Archives will be changing with the release of Ubuntu 23.10.
-
AlmaLinux 9.2 Now Available for Download
AlmaLinux has been released and provides a free alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
-
An Immutable Version of Fedora Is Under Consideration
For anyone who's a fan of using immutable versions of Linux, the Fedora team is currently considering adding a new spin called Fedora Onyx.
-
New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration
Br OS 23.04 is now available and is geared specifically toward web content creation.
-
Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1 Available Now
The latest iteration of Peropesis has been released with plenty of updates and introduces new software development tools.
-
TUXEDO Computers Announces InfinityBook Pro 14
With the new generation of their popular InfinityBook Pro 14, TUXEDO upgrades its ultra-mobile, powerful business laptop with some impressive specs.