Safe Eyes

Protect your eyes from eye strain using this simple and beautiful, yet extensible break reminder.

Visit the official site: https://slgobinath.github.io/SafeEyes/ for more details.

Safe Eyes command-line arguments

usage: safeeyes [-h] [-a | -d | -e | -q | -s | -t] [--debug] [--version]

Safe Eyes protects your eyes from eye strain (asthenopia) by reminding you to
take breaks while you're working long hours at the computer.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help        show this help message and exit
  -a, --about       show the about dialog
  -d, --disable     disable the currently running safeeyes instance
  -e, --enable      enable the currently running safeeyes instance
  -q, --quit        quit the running safeeyes instance and exit
  -s, --settings    show the settings dialog
  -t, --take-break  take a break now
  --debug           start safeeyes in debug mode
  --status          print the status of running safeeyes instance and exit
  --version         show program's version number and exit

Installation guide

Safe Eyes is available on the official repositories of many popular the distributions.

It is also available in Ubuntu PPA, Arch AUR and Python PyPI. You can choose any installation source and install on any Linux system with Python 3.

Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu Derivatives

The Official PPA for Safe Eyes hosts the latest version of safeeyes for Ubuntu 22.04 and above.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:safeeyes-team/safeeyes
sudo apt update
sudo apt install safeeyes

On older versions of Ubuntu, an older version of Safe Eyes is available on the official repositories.

sudo apt install safeeyes

Arch

yay -S safeeyes

Gentoo

sudo emerge -av x11-misc/safeeyes

Debian

sudo apt-get install safeeyes

Fedora

If you want to use Smart Pause plugin, install the latest xprintidle from: alonid/xprintidle

sudo dnf install python3-psutil python3-packaging cairo-devel python3-devel gobject-introspection-devel cairo-gobject-devel
sudo pip3 install safeeyes
sudo gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/hicolor

We are looking for an official package maintainer for Fedora. Please contact us if you are interested.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper install safeeyes

Alpine Linux

sudo apk add safeeyes

Flatpak

Warning: Many plugins and features don't work well in the flatpak. We recommend that you use one of the native packages listed above. Flatpak-only bugs should be reported at https://github.com/flathub/io.github.slgobinath.SafeEyes.

flatpak install flathub io.github.slgobinath.SafeEyes

Other Linux & Run from source

Ensure to meet the following dependencies:

• gir1.2-notify-0.7
• python3-babel
• python3-croniter
• python3-psutil
• python3-packaging
• python3-xlib
• xprintidle (optional)
• wlrctl (wayland optional)
• Python 3.10+

To install Safe Eyes:

sudo pip3 install safeeyes

After installation, restart your system to update the icons,

To run from source:

git clone https://github.com/slgobinath/SafeEyes.git
cd SafeEyes
python3 -m safeeyes

Safe Eyes installers install the required icons to /usr/share/icons/hicolor. When you run Safe Eyes from source without, some icons may not appear.

Install in a virtual environment

Some Linux systems like CentOS do not have matching dependencies available in their repository. In such systems, you can install and use Safe Eyes in a Python virtual environment.

1. Install the necessary dependencies for CentOS 7

   sudo yum install python3-devel dbus dbus-devel cairo cairo-devel cairomm-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel pango pango-devel pangomm pangomm-devel gobject-introspection-devel cairo-gobject-devel
   

2. Create a virtual environment in your home folder

   mkdir ~/safeeyes
   cd ~/safeeyes/
   
   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   pip3 install safeeyes
   

3. Start Safe Eyes from the terminal

   cd ~/safeeyes & source venv/bin/activate
   python3 -m safeeyes
   

For more details, please check the issue: #329

Features

• Remind you to take breaks with exercises to reduce RSI
• Disable keyboard during breaks
• Notification before and after breaks
• Smart pause if system is idle
• Multi-screen support
• Customizable user interface
• RPC API to control externally
• Command-line arguments to control the running instance
• Customizable using plug-ins

Third-party Plugins

Thirdparty plugins are available at another GitHub repository: safeeyes-plugins. More details about how to write your own plugin and how to install third-party plugin are available there.

Local development

When adding new translatable strings in the source code, make sure to run python validate_po.py --extract to add them to the translation template. You will need to install python3-polib for this.

Examples for translatable strings are _("This is a string") in Python code, or <property name="label" translatable="yes">This is a label</property> in Glade/xml files.

To ensure the new strings are well-formed, you can use python validate_po.py --validate.

How to Release?

0. Run update-po.sh to generate new translation files (which will be eventually updated by translators). Commit and push the changes to the master branch.
1. Checkout the latest commits from the master branch
2. Run python3 -m safeeyes to make sure nothing is broken
3. Update the Safe Eyes version in the following places (Open the project in VSCode and search for the current version):
   • setup.py
   • setup.py
   • safeeyes.py
   • io.github.slgobinath.SafeEyes.metainfo.xml
   • about_dialog.glade
4. Update the changelog (for Ubuntu PPA release)
5. Commit the changes to master
6. Create a pull-request from master to release
7. Merge the PR to release with merge commit (Important to merge with merge commit)

How you can help improving translation of Safe Eyes

First check if translations for your language are already available on Weblate, which is the cloud based translation platform we use.

• If the language is already there, feel free to add new translations or improve the existing ones.
• If it is not there, please open an issue in Github so that we can add your language to Weblate.

License

GNU General Public License v3