A native Win32 C++ desktop application that monitors keyboard and mouse activity and reminds you to take regular breaks. It runs in the system tray, tracks your input over a rolling window, detects 3-minute idle breaks, and shows balloon notifications when you've been working too long without a rest.
- Tracks keyboard and mouse activity in real time via
GetLastInputInfo— no hooks or drivers required - Distinguishes keyboard vs. mouse input for per-device activity breakdown
- Rolling-window activity graph with a keyboard/mouse split, shaded break bands, and a labeled time axis
- Counts ~20-second micro-pauses as well as full 3-minute breaks
- A locked session counts as time away from the keyboard, so locking your PC accrues toward a break
- Configurable break interval (20–120 minutes via slider or the number box)
- Color-coded urgency: the tray icon shifts green → yellow → red as you approach and exceed the limit
- Balloon notifications with break reminders and rotating posture/ergonomic tips
- 20-20-20 eye-strain rule: reminds you to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes of continuous use, yielding to an overdue break warning so the two never collide
- Dark-themed window (including the title bar) with stat cards: active time, next break countdown, breaks taken, longest stretch, and a daily ergonomic score (0–100)
- Activity graph covering the last four hours, plus a pie chart breaking the day into keyboard, mouse, machine-on, locked and off time
- Per-monitor DPI awareness (PerMonitorV2) for crisp rendering on any display
- Persists per-day statistics to
%APPDATA%\ergo-active\history.csv(active minutes, breaks, longest stretch, score, micro-pauses, and keyboard/mouse/idle/locked ticks) - Retains up to 30 days of history; the rolling activity window survives restarts in
%APPDATA%\ergo-active\usage.dat - Data is flushed every five minutes as well as on exit and at Windows shutdown
- The ergonomic score is measured against your configured break interval, rewarding regular breaks and penalizing long unbroken stretches
- Runs quietly in the system tray with a dynamic color-coded icon
- Live tooltip showing time to the next break (or how overdue you are) and today's score
- Context menu for quick access; closing the window offers Hide or Exit
- Only one instance runs at a time — launching again surfaces the window that is already running
- Automatically recovers the tray icon if Explorer restarts
Requires Visual Studio with the C++ desktop workload. The tree is warning-clean at /W4.
.\dd.ps1 run # build Release x64 and launch it
.\dd.ps1 build # build onlydd.ps1 also accepts -Configuration Debug and -Platform Win32. Alternatively open ergo-active.sln, or build from the command line:
msbuild ergo-active.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 /mBinaries are written to Exe\ergo-active-{32|64}[d].exe.
CC0 1.0 Universal — public domain.