StretchSteam

StretchSteam sits in your menu bar and interrupts you every so often for a stretch - three poses, about eighty seconds, then it gets out of the way.

It is not a workout app and it does not track anything. It knows twelve stretches for the four places a day at a keyboard shows up - neck, shoulders, back and wrists - and its whole job is to make sure you actually do a few of them before the day is over.

Highlights

1. A stretch every 45 minutes - or every 5, or every 4 hours. The interval is yours; the default is the one desk-stretch advice keeps landing on.
2. Three poses, about 80 seconds - short enough that you actually do it instead of dismissing it.
3. Twelve stretches, four areas - neck, shoulders, back and wrists - the four places a day at a keyboard shows up. Turn off any area you do not want.
4. Cover the screen, or sit in the corner - a full-screen dimmed overlay when you need to be interrupted, a small corner panel when you are in a meeting. Switch any time.
5. Not now, not never - one click pushes the next break out by ten minutes instead of cancelling it.
6. A countdown in the menu bar - see how long until the next one without opening anything. Turn it off if you would rather not watch a clock.
7. It notices when you were away - close the lid, come back, and the timer picks up where it makes sense instead of firing the moment you wake.
8. Every screen, not just the main one - the overlay covers each display, and a screen plugged in mid-stretch gets covered too.

How it works

Set how often you want a break and which areas to include. When the timer runs out, StretchSteam shows you one stretch at a time: what to do in a single sentence, a photograph of someone doing it, and a ring counting down the hold. Two-sided stretches tell you when to switch. When the three are done the window disappears on its own - there is nothing to dismiss.

If the moment is wrong, "Not now" pushes the break out by ten minutes. If you want one early, "Stretch now" is in the menu bar. Everything is a preference, nothing is an account: your settings stay on your own computer and the app never asks you to sign in to use the timer.

Perfect for

1. Anyone who codes, writes or designs all day - the people whose neck and wrists notice first.
2. Working from a laptop on a kitchen table - when the setup was never going to be ergonomic in the first place.
3. Long meeting days - the corner panel keeps the reminder without putting it on a shared screen.
4. Getting back into a habit - the timer does the remembering, so you only have to do the stretch.