Clearhead

Coding for hours without a break catches up with you. Clearhead gives you a short pause, a 30-second breathing exercise to settle your mind, followed by a quote worth sitting with. It runs quietly in the background and nudges you every 30 minutes, or you can pull it up anytime with a keyboard shortcut.

What it does

• Ctrl+Shift+Q — start a session whenever you need one
• Guided breathing — 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out, for 30 seconds
• A quote after — calm the body first, then the mind
• Auto sessions — a new break every 30 minutes, so you don't have to remember
• No repeats — works through all 38 quotes before cycling back
• Your own quotes — add anything that resonates with you in settings
• Fully offline — works without internet, never sends any data anywhere

Configuration

Adding Your Own Quotes

Open your settings.json (Ctrl+, → top-right "Open Settings JSON") and add whatever you like:

"clearhead.quotes.userQuotes": [
  { "text": "This too shall pass.", "author": "Persian proverb" },
  { "text": "Breathe." }
]

The author field is optional. Your quotes are shuffled in with the built-in ones — no separate pool.

Customizing the experience

All settings live under clearhead.* in your settings.json. Here's an example with everything configured:

"clearhead.autoShow.enabled": true,
"clearhead.autoShow.intervalMinutes": 20,
"clearhead.breathing.durationSeconds": 60,
"clearhead.display.durationSeconds": 15,
"clearhead.quotes.userQuotes": [
  { "text": "This too shall pass.", "author": "Persian proverb" },
  { "text": "Breathe." }
]

• Set autoShow.enabled to false if you only want sessions on demand via Ctrl+Shift+Q
• intervalMinutes accepts any value from 1 upward
• breathing.durationSeconds must be a multiple of 10, minimum 20 (each 10s = one full inhale + exhale cycle)
• display.durationSeconds controls how long the quote stays before the panel closes automatically