Pauselet

Recurring reminders for macOS, where you choose how loudly each one interrupts you.

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A macOS menu bar app for recurring activity reminders, where how loudly a reminder interrupts you is something you choose per reminder.

It was built for a wheelchair user who needs regular pressure relief, so the central idea is that a medically important prompt and a nice-to-have nudge should not feel the same. It works just as well for anyone who wants to drink water, stretch, take medication, or call their mum every Sunday.

Everything is stored locally. There is no account, no sync, and no network code in the app at all — the optional Spotify playback drives the Spotify app on your own Mac through AppleScript, not through any web service.

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Critical reminders take over the screen

The hourly tilt reminder is the reason this app exists. It dims every display and stays there until you acknowledge it, with a countdown so "stop working for five minutes" is a finite thing rather than an open-ended instruction.

Subtle reminders stay out of the way

The 20-minute weight shift nudge is the opposite: a small card in the corner that never steals focus and fades away on its own. Frequent reminders have to be quiet, or you learn to ignore them.

Everything at a glance

Clicking the menu bar icon shows what is coming and when. You can tick something off, flick a reminder on or off, or pause everything.

Managing your reminders

Adding your own

Give it a name, pick an icon, choose how often it repeats and how much it should interrupt you. Each priority explains what it will actually do, so the choice is not a guess.

Reminders can start your music

A reminder that tells you to stop working and relax is more convincing when the music starts by itself. Paste a Spotify playlist link into Preferences and any reminder can play it — launching Spotify first if it is not already running, and fading the volume up rather than starting at whatever it was last left at.

Each reminder chooses for itself: no music, the default playlist, or one of its own. Calm piano for the tilt-back reminder, something with a pulse for a movement prompt.

Every setting explains itself

Each preference has an (i) button. They open on a click rather than a hover, so they work with head-pointer, switch and keyboard input.

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Priority tiers

Tier	Presentation
Subtle	A small silent card in the corner that fades away by itself
Normal	A standard notification
Important	A notification with sound, marked time-sensitive
Critical	A full-screen overlay on every display, until you acknowledge it

Schedules

• Repeating — every N minutes, measured from the last time it fired
• Daily — at a set time, every N days (so "every second day" stays in phase)
• Weekly — at a set time on chosen weekdays

Reminders with a set duration show a countdown while you do the activity.

What ships by default

Reminder	Schedule	Tier
Tilt Back	Every hour, 5-minute countdown	Critical
Weight Shift	Every 20 minutes	Subtle
Drink Water	Every hour	Normal
Stretch & Range of Motion	Every 2 days at 17:00	Important (off by default)

All of them can be edited or deleted, and you can add your own.

Other behaviour

• Quiet hours — set them in Preferences → Quiet Hours. Switching them on reveals the time range and a "Still show critical reminders" option, which is on by default so pressure-relief prompts are not silenced overnight
• Pause for 30/60/120 minutes or indefinitely; resuming re-anchors the intervals so you do not get a backlog dumped on you at once
• Snooze, which is authoritative: it will bring a reminder back even if the natural next slot is further away, and it fires late rather than vanishing if your Mac was asleep at the moment it was due
• Preview, in the reminder editor, so you can see exactly how a reminder will appear before you commit to it
• Per-reminder on-screen time for subtle cards, so a longer message can be given longer to read. Normal and Important use macOS notifications, whose timing macOS controls
• Help buttons on every preference, explaining what it does — as a click rather than a hover, so they work with assistive input
• Music, per reminder — no music, a default Spotify playlist set once in Preferences, or a playlist chosen for that one reminder. Spotify is launched if it is not running, and the volume fades up rather than starting wherever it was left
• History and adherence, showing how often each reminder was completed
• Launch at login, since a reminder app you have to remember to start is not much of a reminder app

Requirements

macOS 13 or later.

Installing

Download the latest release, unzip it, and drag Pauselet.app to your Applications folder. The released build is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning.

macOS will ask for notification permission the first time it runs. If you decline, or the prompt never appears, the Normal and Important tiers fall back to the app's own on-screen card — nothing is silently dropped either way. You can change your mind later in System Settings → Notifications → Pauselet.

If you set up a playlist, macOS also asks for permission to control Spotify. That prompt appears while you are saving the playlist, rather than an hour later in the middle of a reminder. If you decline, reminders still fire — just without music — and you can grant it later in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation.

Building from source

./scripts/build_app.sh      # builds dist/Pauselet.app, ad-hoc signed
open dist/Pauselet.app

To sign with your own Developer ID:

SIGN_IDENTITY="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)" ./scripts/build_app.sh

Notarization

macOS will not grant notification authorization to an app it does not fully trust, so a build for other people needs notarizing:

xcrun notarytool store-credentials "reminder-notary" \
  --apple-id "you@example.com" --team-id "TEAMID" \
  --password "app-specific-password"

./scripts/notarize.sh

An app-specific password is created at appleid.apple.com under "App-Specific Passwords".

Tests

swift test

The scheduling logic is a pure function of (reminder, now) with no timers, so the suite drives a controllable clock. It covers overdue catch-up after the Mac sleeps, snooze, quiet hours, pause, daylight-saving shifts in both directions, leap day, and month and year boundaries.

Icons

Resources/icon-source.png is the app icon artwork and Resources/menubar-icon.svg the menu bar mark. The .icns and the template images are generated from them — the build crops the artwork to its content and applies the rounded mask macOS expects:

./scripts/build_icons.sh

Screenshots

./dist/Pauselet.app/Contents/MacOS/Pauselet --snapshot build/ui
./dist/Pauselet.app/Contents/MacOS/Pauselet --open-settings

--snapshot renders each surface to a PNG, which is easier than trying to photograph a transient popover.

Where your data lives

~/Library/Application Support/Pauselet/data.json

Plain JSON — readable, editable, backup-able, and yours.

Layout

Sources/ReminderCore/   Models, scheduler, storage, engine (no UI, fully tested)
Sources/ReminderApp/    Menu bar, overlays, notifications, settings
Tests/                  116 tests against the core
scripts/                Build, notarize, icon generation, rasterizer

ReminderCore deliberately knows nothing about AppKit: the engine hands fired reminders to a ReminderPresenting protocol, which is what makes the firing rules testable without a screen.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE.