Break reminders that leave room for work
A break reminder turns into an interruption when it lands in the middle of a presentation or a call. Hina's sit-too-long card is on by default, appears rarely, and stays silent in a long list of situations, so that when it does speak, the timing is plausible.
When the card appears
The reminder is the Sit-too-long reminder switch on the General tab of Settings, and it starts on. It watches for continuous presence, meaning you have been at the Mac without a gap of three minutes in keyboard and mouse input. After about 90 minutes of that, a small card appears in the top corner of the screen. It shows at most three times a day, and a day runs from 04:00 to 04:00 like the rest of Hina.
What the card says depends on the time of day and how many times it has spoken that day. In the daytime four prompts take turns, which are to loosen your shoulders, go and refill your water, take a short walk, and look into the distance, and the one that comes first changes with the date. After 6 p.m. the card asks you to step away from the screen, and from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. it says it is late and time to get some rest.
What you can do with it
A daytime card has two buttons, Later and Take a break. Later hides the card and keeps quiet for 25 minutes. Take a break turns the same card into a rest timer with a thin progress bar. Loosening your shoulders and looking into the distance last 20 seconds, and the water, walk and evening prompts last two minutes. During a rest you can Hide the card, and the rest keeps counting, or choose Done resting. The late-night card has only Got it and no rest timer, and once it has appeared there is no other reminder until 6 a.m.
If you do not touch the card for a minute, Hina treats that as Later. The default is the quiet one.
When it stays quiet
The card holds back while recording is paused, while you are away, locked or asleep, and while the idle review question is on screen, since two cards should not compete for the corner. It also holds back when the foreground app is in full screen, when the microphone is in use, which covers calls and dictation, and when the Mac is playing sound. If Hina cannot read that context, it waits.
A card that is still asking when a call or a full-screen app begins is simply closed, and that is not treated as Later. A rest that is already running is hidden and keeps counting.
It does not keep score
The card is a floating panel that does not take the keyboard focus, so a half-typed line is not hijacked, and the menu bar shows no countdown. Hina writes no record of whether you followed it. The reminder does not enter the daily report, and there is no break compliance figure anywhere in the app. Ignoring a card leaves nothing behind.
If you walk away while a rest is running, Hina counts the rest as done and does not ask. You left the seat, which is what the reminder was hoping for, and following up would turn a reminder into a time clock.
Idle review is a different question
Hina asks a second thing that can look similar. After a stretch of ten minutes to two hours without input and without a locked screen, a card on your return asks whether that time was Meeting, Reading / thinking, Watching or Away. It is about recording that time accurately, and it is separate from the break reminder. The two never appear together, and the idle review takes the corner first.
The question goes away after about a minute if you ignore it, and the time stays as Away.
Changing how often it speaks
The reminder has one switch and no interval slider. The 90 minutes and the daily limit are fixed, because a reminder you have to configure first is a cost every user would pay. If it is not useful to you, turn it off on the General tab and nothing else about recording changes. Pausing recording also silences it, which is handy before a long talk, although the full screen and microphone rules should already cover most of those cases.