Nowadays, most of us spend at least a few hours in front of a computer screen every day, and this can have both mental and physical side effects. However, it is difficult to remember when a break is due without the right application to help you out.

Health Break is designed to enable you to create a fixed work-break schedule and then follow it to the letter. It displays a timer on your desktop to inform you when the next break is due, at which point it provides a helpful reminder.

While Health Break does its job quite well, it lacks some features that would have made it a lot more appealing to new users.

For one, while the application is capable of detecting user activity, the work timer is not paused when you are idle, and only mouse input is taken into consideration.

Also, despite the fact that you can specify the Idle time, the break notification does not seem to disappear unless closed by the user.

If it is simply not possible to interrupt your current task, you can postpone your break, causing the alert window to become translucent. While this makes it easier to view your desktop, the notification can still get in your way.

Health Break is sent to your PC’s system tray upon launch and only adds a small window on your desktop that displays the work timer. However, while the window can be resized, the title bar cannot be removed, the font size cannot be increased, and there are no additional styles available.

Moreover, you cannot modify the background color, and the default one may not be to everyone’s tastes.

When taking all of the above into consideration, Health Break is a simple application that does its job, even though it could be improved in a few respects. It reminds you to take breaks at regular intervals, which is something many PC users tend to forget.