Getting started

Pronounced "ahn-TRAHKT"

Entracte is French for the interval between acts of a play — IPA /ɑ̃.tʁakt/. "En-tract" with a hard t is the common-but-incorrect English reading; we say it the French way.

_{Recording by Vion Nicolas via the Shtooka Project, used under CC BY 2.0 France.}

Entracte runs as a menu bar / tray app. After launching it, you'll see a small stage-arch icon in the system tray — that's the only entry point. There is no Dock icon on macOS, by design.

First minute

1. Click the tray icon to open the menu.
2. Open Preferences to review or change the defaults.
3. Leave it running. Entracte will fire its first Micro break after the configured interval (default: 20 minutes).

How a break works

When a break fires, Entracte takes over every monitor with a borderless overlay showing a countdown ring. Micro breaks are short (around 20 seconds) and can be dismissed; Long breaks are multi-minute and undismissable by default. Sleep prompts appear during your configured bedtime window.

A pre-break notification can fire a few seconds before each break — enough warning to finish a sentence, not enough to forget.

Looking back

Entracte keeps a local history of every break — taken, dismissed, postponed, or suppressed by Do Not Disturb / camera / idle. The Insights tab in Preferences summarises the past week or month, with a time-of-day distribution and a 12-week heatmap. Export to CSV or clear at any time.

Pausing

Open the tray menu and pick Pause for…:

• 15 minutes
• 30 minutes
• 1 hour
• 2 hours
• 4 hours
• Until tomorrow 6 am
• Indefinitely

A paused Entracte will not fire breaks, but the bedtime prompt still works.

When breaks are skipped automatically

Entracte tries to be a good citizen. It will skip a scheduled break if any of these are true:

• Your system Do Not Disturb / Focus mode is on.
• Your camera is active (you're probably in a meeting).
• You've been idle longer than the configured threshold (you already stepped away).
• The current time is outside your active hours window.

See Settings for how to tune each of these.