Workrave 1.11.5 Adds Quiet Micro-Breaks and Sleep Buttons to Your Rest Breaks
The classic break-reminder tool learns to nag you less during micro-breaks and gets a few long-overdue Windows manners.
Picture the scene: you are halfway through a tricky spreadsheet, and a break window pops up to tell you to stretch your wrists. Useful in theory, maddening in practice. Workrave, the long-running open-source reminder for people who sit at a keyboard all day, now has a gentler answer to that exact moment.
Less nagging, more control
The new "Break in quiet-mode" option for micro-breaks lets the micro-break timer keep counting without throwing up automatic reminders, while your rest-break reminders stay switched on. In other words, Workrave still tracks how long you have been going, but only interrupts you for the bigger pauses. Windows users also get a handy touch on the rest-break window itself: shutdown, sleep and hibernate buttons, so the end of a long day can start right where the break prompt appears.
A second Windows-and-Linux/X11 tweak tidies your taskbar. There is now an option to hide the status window from the taskbar and window switcher, and it is on by default, so Workrave no longer clutters Alt+Tab. The installer gains a /NOLAUNCH switch for anyone deploying it quietly, and GNOME Shell 51 is supported for the Linux crowd.
Bug fixes you might have noticed
Blocking break windows used to show up in the taskbar and window switcher, which is now fixed. The preferences window no longer pops open when you merely dismiss the tray menu, and that menu follows your light or dark appearance. Installing for the current Windows user no longer trips over registry permission errors. Smaller corrections cover reading-mode timers, the automatic-start setting and the sound theme shown when you reopen the sound preferences.
Our verdict
If Workrave is already running on your PC, this is a comfortable upgrade, especially if micro-break pop-ups have driven you to disable the tool altogether; the quiet mode may win you back. If you have never tried a break reminder, the extra Windows polish makes this a friendly moment to start. Nothing here is urgent, but the tray and taskbar fixes make daily use noticeably calmer.
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