Update from February 9th, 2021:
Breaks for Eyes has found a new owner! I'm extremely thrilled to announce that Alex Greene has just taken it over and will continue its development and maintenance. Alex is a software developer from San Francisco who, like many of you, has been enjoying better eye health thanks to regular breaks from code wrestling and bug hunting. He set out to make BFE even better and get even more people to take care of their precious eyeballs.
It's hard to describe how happy we are at Gikken—our little software baby will live on! Even though it stopped making sense for us business-wise, we never stopped loving Breaks for Eyes. It's terrific news for us that it has landed in good hands.
Breaks for Eyes will be available on https://breaksforeyes.app and the Mac App Store.
As of Feb 9th, 2021, the following text is outdated. Leaving it here for the sake of transparency.
We use computers every day. We stare at them for hours on end. Screens envelop us! In October 2018, we created Breaks for Eyes to counter Computer Vision Syndrome and ease eye strain. It was a simple tool that matched up perfectly with our mission to make people's days brighter in a small way.
...we must discontinue it on February 19th, 2021 to focus on our other products...
Despite its elegance, Breaks for Eyes did not pull enough profit to sustain itself and we must discontinue it on February 19th, 2021 to focus on our other products. Gikken has matured greatly over the past year and we gradually came to understand that our attention cannot be spread thin. To create as beautiful and impactful a product as Mate Translate, we must fully dedicate ourselves to it and not be distracted by other projects that do not capture enough interest from our community. Mate is approaching 1 million monthly active users—we don't want to ignore this. We want to feed the flame, making Mate the very best it can possibly be.
We know many folks still use Breaks for Eyes daily and encourage everyone to carry on their healthy ocular habits. Hopefully our little app has inspired some to walk away from work and wake up to the world around them every so often—it's a wonderful exercise in mindfulness.
Thank you for taking breaks with us. Stay in the moment. Look around and soak in your surroundings. Most of all—take care of yourself.
Team Gikken
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