Glossary

Idle-Reactive

A scheduling approach where the app watches your actual PC activity and adjusts in real time, rather than running a fixed countdown timer. FocusBreaks detects when you're working, idle, or in a meeting, and responds accordingly. If you step away, it notices. If you come back, it picks up.

Most break reminder apps are timer-based — they count down regardless of what you're doing. Idle-reactive means the app reacts to you, not the other way around.

Full Break

A period of consecutive idle time that meets the break threshold. By default, a full break is reached when you've been idle for at least 80% of your scheduled break duration. This percentage is configurable (50–100%).

When a full break is detected, the focus timer resets. You don't need to press anything — FocusBreaks scans your activity minute by minute and recognizes the break automatically.

Session

The continuous work period since your last full break. FocusBreaks scans backwards through your activity to find the most recent full break, then counts forward to compute how many active minutes you've accumulated since. The focus countdown is based on this number.

Short idle periods within a session (checking your phone, staring out the window) don't count as recovery — only a full break resets the timer.

Blip

A single isolated minute of activity surrounded by idle time (at least 3 idle minutes on each side). FocusBreaks filters blips out of break detection so a stray mouse bump doesn't reset your idle timer and invalidate a natural break.

Today Counter

The running total of active work time for the current day, displayed on the floating widget. It counts only minutes where keyboard or mouse input was detected — not time spent idle, in meetings, or away.

This is the single most useful number in FocusBreaks. It answers the question: "How much have I actually worked today?" Without guessing.

Active Time

Minutes where keyboard or mouse input was detected. FocusBreaks records this at one-minute resolution using a bitmap — each minute of the day is either active or idle. No keystrokes or content is logged, just the binary: input detected or not.

Gap

A period when FocusBreaks was not running. This happens during sleep, screen lock, shutdown, or if the app was closed. Gaps are recorded with timestamps and reason codes so your activity chart shows what happened accurately.

Meeting Detection

FocusBreaks monitors your microphone and camera status through the Windows capability registry (the same data Windows uses for the taskbar mic/camera indicators). When your mic or camera is active, break reminders are suppressed — you're probably in a meeting.

Idle Prevention

A built-in feature that simulates minimal activity to prevent the operating system (or monitoring tools) from marking you as idle. FocusBreaks includes this natively so that a third-party jiggler doesn't corrupt the app's own activity measurements.

Idle Time Anxiety

The stress remote workers feel about appearing idle on monitoring tools, even when their output is strong. You know you're productive, but the away status creates doubt. This anxiety often leads to performative busyness — sitting at your desk to look active rather than taking the break you need.

FocusBreaks addresses this by giving you an accurate picture of your own work time, so you know the truth regardless of what any monitoring tool says.

An optional transition period at the start of your workday. A gentle ramp-up before full focus begins. Configurable from 0 to 480 minutes. During wind up, break alerts are relaxed and the screen can be kept on.

An optional cooldown at the end of your workday. The counterpart to wind up. Helps you ease out of work mode rather than stopping abruptly.

Pinned Mode

A manual override that locks FocusBreaks into a specific state — Focus, Break, or Off — regardless of the schedule. Only one can be active at a time (radio-button style). Useful when you need to extend a focus session or force a break.