Feature: Custom Text (reminders) in the full screen interface

[xoich]

The break interface would be a fantastic space for reminders of all kinds.

I think the best way (flexible and simple) to do this is by specifying an executable that is run at each break time and whose stdout is the text to display.

The executable might be either on an expected path or configurable

Sane Break might pass as arguments to the executable some info, certainly whether it's a long or short break.

[AllanChain]

Can you elaborate why the current settings in the "Interface" tab fail to meet your needs? Using external executables is indeed more flexible, but I don't quite get the use case.

[xoich]

hi @AllanChain, the idea is that you can connect it to the calendar, todos, have custom appearance logic other than random etc.

[AllanChain]

This is a great idea. However, I'm afraid that this is kind of out of scope for a break reminder. I'm putting this in a low priority, but I'm open to discussions.

[Cwpute]

Alternatively, would you be open for commits ?

[AllanChain]

I'm open to PRs. However, please note that:

• This can introduce security concerns. We have to protect the users from unwanted arbitrary code executions.
• Running other programs is not allowed in Flatpak, macOS sandbox, etc. Therefore, this can only be enabled on some of the platforms.
• Probably we can implement a small plugin system for adding contents, like what SafeEyes does.

[AndhikaWB]

I don't really like this. I think the program is already complex enough right now with the addition of focus and meeting mode.

My main concern would be the memory usage if a plugin system is ever implemented. There are tons of other reminder apps that uses Electron and probably have some kind of plugin system already. The reason I choose Sane Break over them is because it doesn't hog my RAM as much as Electron does.

Even without this, Sane Break (v0.10) is currently already using ~170 MB of my RAM. I consider that pretty big for a simple reminder app.

EDIT: Looking at the PSS value the real usage is around 58 MB on my Linux machine, so it's actually pretty good. However, I still think the plugin system is not really worth it. Looking at the SafeEyes repo, there's only 1 public plugin available so far (other than the built-in ones), and the repo for that plugin has been deleted/migrated.

[Cwpute]

Even without this, Sane Break (v0.10) is currently already using ~170 MB of my RAM. I consider that pretty big for a simple reminder app.

If you know any means by which you could help it reduce its memory usage, feel free to contribute !

[AllanChain]

Even without this, Sane Break (v0.10) is currently already using ~170 MB of my RAM. I consider that pretty big for a simple reminder app.

Just to clarify that it is probably not the app actually using 170 MB by itself. Linux tools often count shared Qt and system components as part of every app that uses them, so the displayed number can look much higher than the app’s real cost.

On macOS and Windows, Sane Break takes around 50-60 MB, and Linux is likely in the same range in practice. If you want to estimate how much memory is really used on Linux, you can look for the PSS number (PSS = private memory + shared memory / number of processes sharing it):

grep -E 'Pss:' /proc/$(pgrep -n sane-break)/smaps_rollup

On my machine it's around 40 MB.