Actually relaxing
Calm, full-screen rain that rises, holds, and softly settles - not a ticking timer bar. Somewhere to put your eyes down and let your shoulders drop.
// the relaxing rain break for macOS
The AI doesn’t need a break.
But you do.
One keystroke turns your screen into calm rain and gives you a real break - 1 to 21 minutes. Your AI agents keep shipping while you breathe. A free macOS menu-bar app.
Take a short break. A rain break. A real one.
// why a rain break
AI agents made your Mac as moreish as a social feed.
Dopamine hits, infinite scroll, one more prompt - the same loop that makes social media so easy to love now lives in your terminal. Great for shipping. A lot for one human. A short rain break gives your head a moment to catch up, and you come back sharper.
You cannot out-work software that never sleeps. So stop trying. Out-rest it instead.
It’s not how hard you work. It’s whether you can stop.
// the honest catch
There is no skip button.
A RainBreak holds for the whole break - one minute, two, five, all the way to twenty-one, however long you set. You can’t click it away. You can’t “just send one more message.” The rain stays until your time is up.
There is exactly one way to escape early: shut down your Mac. But that shuts down your agents too - and you don’t want that. Yes, the escape hatch is dumb on purpose. The break is short, your agents are fine, just wait it out. Close your eyes. It’s raining.
(Best paired with agents running unattended. If yours stop to ask permission, keep the breaks short - or let them auto-approve while you rest.)
A break worth taking. One you can’t weasel out of.
Your agents don’t pause
The rain takes your screen, not your work. Claude Code and Codex keep running while you rest. You lose nothing by stepping away - that is the whole trick.
It holds
Keys, clicks, and scroll are gently blocked for the full break. No skip, no snooze, no “one more thing.” By design, the only early exit is a full shutdown.
Your rhythm, one keystroke
One, two, five, seven, twelve, or twenty-one minute breaks straight from the menu bar. A quick breather or a real pause - pick one and the rain takes over.
Three steps. Then it just runs.
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1
Install and launch
A quick first-run setup, with rain already falling behind it.
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2
Work as usual
RainBreak waits in the menu bar. Your agents run. The rain is one keystroke away.
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3
Take the break
Pick a length. The screen turns to rain - and holds it until you are done.
Give yourself a real break.
Take a break. Take a RainBreak.
Download RainBreak - free- Apple-notarized
- Apple silicon & Intel
- macOS 14+
- No sign-up
// for the skeptic (hi)
It blocks your input. Here is exactly how - and what can’t go wrong.
- How does it block the keyboard and mouse?
- Through macOS’s normal input-monitoring APIs (a CGEventTap plus event monitors) - the same mechanism screen-time and accessibility tools use. No kernel extension, no driver, nothing that can wedge your Mac.
- What if it crashes?
- The block lives in the RainBreak process. If it ever crashes or is killed, the block dies with it and your Mac comes back instantly - you are never locked out by a bug, only by design.
- And if I really need out of a break?
- By default you wait it out - that is the point - or shut the Mac down. If you want a panic key, turn on the double-Esc emergency exit in Settings; it is off by default.
- Is it spying on my screen?
- No account, no telemetry, no servers. Everything runs locally on your Mac, and it is Apple-notarized so Gatekeeper has already checked it.