Coming soon to the Mac App Store
Breaks up your sitting.
Not your focus.
Short movement and eye breaks, designed by a physiotherapist and spread across your workday. When one is due, a calm invitation waits at the edge of your screen — it never locks it, and never makes a sound.
Spread through the day
Not one session saved for the evening — a few short moves across the working day.
Never in your way
It waits at the edge of the screen, holds off during meetings and never blocks a click.
Designed by a physiotherapist
36 movements, each with its dose and weekly frequency. Filmed at real speed.
What the research says
Four things worth knowing.
Blinks per minute, relaxed and at a screen. Reading off a display, we blink about a third as often.
104 office workers · Tsubota & Nakamori, NEJM 1993Two minutes of exercise a day meaningfully reduced neck and shoulder pain within ten weeks, in workers who had it often.
198 workers, randomised trial · Andersen et al., Pain 2011One minute of easy walking every hour lowered systolic blood pressure by about five points, compared with sitting all day.
11-person lab trial · Duran, Diaz et al., MSSE 2023Five minutes of walking every half hour cut the blood-sugar spike after meals by 58%.
Same trial, 11 people · Columbia University, 2023Why it matters
An evening workout doesn’t fully undo the day.
Keep exercising — it matters. But eight to ten unbroken hours in a chair are measured as a risk of their own. The good news: the fix is small. Spread the movement through the day.
The walking in these studies was a stroll — about 3.2 km/h. No running, no stairs. Source
For people sitting 14 hours a day rather than 8, no daily step count fully offset the risk of coronary artery disease or heart failure.
15,327 people · Zheng, Brittain et al., Nature Communications 2026Split up, the same walk worked better: 1 min 40 s every half hour lowered blood sugar and insulin after meals more than one 30-minute walk.
70 adults · Peddie et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2013One 30-minute walk in the morning, or five minutes every hour? Only the spread-out version improved mood and reduced fatigue and food cravings by the end of the day.
30 adults · Bergouignan et al., IJBNPA 2016
Not instead of exercise — alongside it.
In data from over a million people, the activity that appeared to cancel out the link between long sitting and early death was 60–75 minutes a day — about three times the recommended minimum.
1,005,791 people · Ekelund et al., The Lancet 2016
Where it adds up
The quiet wear of desk work.
Not one bad day — hundreds of hours in the same position. Calyvento’s movements are chosen for exactly these places.
Eyes
At a screen we blink about a third as often, and digital eye strain may affect half of all computer users or more. 20-20-20 reminders reduced symptoms within two weeks.
Neck
In office workers, neck pain was linked with little variety in the working day and a keyboard kept too close to the body.
Shoulders & upper back
Neck and shoulder stretches twice a day reduced pain within four weeks in office workers with chronic neck pain.
Lower back
Low back pain is the leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide: 619 million people in 2020.
Wrists & forearms
Micro-breaks every 20 minutes reduced discomfort in the neck, back, shoulders and wrists during keyboard work — without lowering productivity.
Legs & circulation
Three hours of sitting still reduced how well a main leg artery could widen; a five-minute walk every hour prevented the drop.
How it works
Three steps, then you forget it’s there.
- 1
Tell it what bothers you.
Pick from twelve common desk complaints and a matching pool of movements is built. Declare a health condition and any movement it rules out is hidden.
- 2
It spreads them out.
Each movement comes back as often as the physiotherapist set: days a week, times a day, hours in between. Today’s goal sits in the menu bar.
- 3
When a break is due, it waits.
A calm invitation appears at the edge of the screen. One click to start, one to snooze — and if you ignore it, nothing turns red.
It stays out of the way
- Holds off during meetings
- Invisible when you share your screen
- Quiet when you silence it
- Follows Reduce Motion
Work, too
Breaks don’t slow the work down.
In the studies, short breaks didn’t cost output. They gave energy back.
Data-entry workers who took twenty extra minutes of short breaks a day typed faster and got the same amount done — with less discomfort and eye strain.
51 workers · Galinsky et al., NIOSH, 2007Across 22 study samples, breaks of ten minutes or less raised energy and reduced fatigue.
2,335 people, meta-analysis · Albulescu et al., PLOS ONE 2022Four hours of unbroken sitting reduced blood flow to the brain. Two minutes of walking every half hour prevented it; eight minutes every two hours did not.
15 desk workers · Carter et al., Journal of Applied Physiology 2018Whether breaks sharpen thinking itself is still an open question — the evidence is mixed. The effect on energy and fatigue is the clear part. Source
The AI pause
While AI thinks, you stretch.
An AI app is in front and you haven’t touched the keyboard for two and a half minutes — you’re probably waiting on an answer. Calyvento notices and raises a calm wave from the edge of the screen. Touch the keyboard and it slips away.
Browsers aren’t on the list: we can’t see which tab is open.
Clinical review
Prepared by a physiotherapist. Filmed at real speed.
Every movement, its dose, how often it comes back and who should avoid it were prepared and approved by a licensed physiotherapist. A 20-second hold takes 20 seconds on screen.
- 26 health conditions, each mapped to the movements it rules out.
- Movements were removed at review — nerve glides, for one, were judged unsuitable to do without supervision.
- The research explains why short breaks help; the physiotherapist decided what this app asks you to do. We keep the two apart.
Calyvento is not a medical device. It doesn’t diagnose, treat or prevent anything. If a movement hurts, stop — and talk to a clinician about persistent pain.
No login. No account. Your data stays on your Mac.
- It knows that you typed — never what you typed.
- No window titles, no web addresses, no screenshots.
- This website doesn’t track you either: no analytics, no cookies.
Pricing
Free is genuinely usable.
Tracking, the daily rhythm, the break invitation, eye and breathing breaks: all of it is in the free tier. Plus lifts the cap on the movement pool, opens every ready-made set, and keeps your whole history.
Free
No account, no card
- 5 movements in your pool
- Two ready-made sets
- Eye and breathing breaks, always on
- Tracking, statistics and daily rhythm
- The break invitation, with both ambient effects
- The last month of history
- One new movement suggestion a month
Calyvento Plus
or $29.99 a year · 7 days free on both
- Unlimited movement pool
- All 13 ready-made sets
- Your whole history, not just the last month
- Work areas — the hours you actually work
- A new movement suggestion every week
- Everything in Free
- Sync across your Macs Coming soon
- Compare your rhythm with other Calyvento users Coming soon
Both plans start with seven days free. Local prices and taxes vary by region, and the App Store shows the exact amount before you confirm.
Questions
Before you ask
Does it need accessibility or screen recording permission?
No. Idle detection reads a system counter of time since the last input event, which requires no permission and reveals nothing about the event itself. App tracking uses the standard workspace notification that tells any app which application came to the front.
Will the reminder show up when I’m presenting?
No. The invitation panels are excluded from screen capture, so they do not appear in Zoom, Teams, QuickTime or OBS. Separately, when a known meeting app is holding the microphone, the app reads that as a meeting and holds the reminder entirely.
Do I have to do the exercises to use it?
No. Tracking, statistics and the daily rhythm work on their own. The exercises are an offer, not a requirement, and skipping one costs you nothing — there is no streak to break.
Can I use it if I have a neck or back problem?
You can declare conditions during setup, and any movement ruled out by one is hidden entirely. That said, Calyvento is not a medical device and doesn’t know your history. If you are under treatment, ask your clinician first.
How does the AI pause decide when to show up?
An AI app has to be in front and you have to have touched nothing for two and a half minutes; before that you might simply be reading a long answer. Then only the wave rises. At five minutes, if a break is genuinely overdue, the full invitation is allowed through. Two nudges are always at least fifteen minutes apart, and browsers are not on the list.
Calyvento is nearly ready.
It is finishing up for the Mac App Store, and a Windows version is on the way. Leave an address and you’ll hear once — on the day yours ships.
One email, when your version is out. No newsletter, no list sharing.