Home Linux Tips & Tricks How To Prevent Eye Strain Using SafeEyes In Linux

How To Prevent Eye Strain Using SafeEyes In Linux

By sk
Published: Last Updated on 3.5K views

If you are a hardcore user who spent long hours in front of computers, I recommended you to use SafeEyes to prevent eye strain in Linux.

Introduction

Working in Computer for long hours is not good for your health. Especially looking at monitors for a long period of time will definitely harm your eyes. You must often take breaks at regular intervals. There are numerous utilities available out there to remind you to take breaks. The one we are going to discuss now is SafeEyes.

What is SafeEyes?

SafeEyes is a free and open Source Linux alternative for EyeLeo, a MS Windows-only app. As the name suggests, SafeEyes will protect you from Eye Strain by reminding or forcing you to take breaks after a particular period of time. During the break, it will suggest you some simple exercises like walking for a while, rolling your eyes etc., to relax yourself.

Features

Concerning about the features, we can list the following.

  • Short breaks with eye exercises.
  • Long breaks to change physical position and to warm up.
  • Strict break for those who are addicted to computer
  • Do not disturb when working with fullscreen applications (Eg: Watching movies).
  • Disable the keyboard during break.
  • Notifications before every break.
  • Multi-workspace support.
  • Highly customizable.
  • Free and open source.

Install SafeEyes On Linux

On Ubuntu and its derivatives, you can install SafeEyes using the following PPA created by the developer.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:slgobinath/safeeyes
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install safeeyes

For Arch Linux and its derivatives, SafeEyes is available in AUR. So, you can install SafeEyes using any AUR helper programs, for example Yay.

$ yay -S safeeyes

On openSUSE:

$ sudo zypper install safeeyes

On other Linux distributions, you can install it using PIP package manager.

$ sudo pip3 install safeeyes

Prevent Eye Strain Using SafeEyes In Linux

Once installed, start SafeEyes either from menu or unity dash. After you started it, SafeEyes will be automatically added to the startup. You can find the SafeEyes tray icon on the task bar.

safeeyes tray icon

safeeyes tray icon

SafeEyes has both short and long break options with different configurable time duration. By default, short break duration is 15 seconds, and long break duration is 60 seconds. The default interval between two breaks is 15 minutes. The number of short breaks between two long breaks is 5. You will be notified before 10 seconds to prepare for a break. You can change and set the time duration as per your liking.

safe eyes settings

safe eyes settings

During the break, SafeEyes disables your key board. SafeEyes also has a skip button, however there is a strict break option that hides the skip button, so that you have no choice but to take a break.

To enable strict break, right click on the SafeEyes tray icon on the taskbar and go to Settings, and enable the 'strict break' option by moving the slider from left to right.

Enable strict break with Safe Eyes

Enable strict break with Safe Eyes

The default settings is enough and will work just fine. For advanced configuration, go to ~/.config/safeeyes folder. There you can change the Skip button text in safeeyes.json file and the look and feel of the break screen in style/safeeyes_style.css file. These files will be created after you start SafeEyes application.


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1 comment

sola October 28, 2016 - 12:33 pm

Looks like great stuff.

Reply

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