Why blink! exists

I work remotely and spend most of my day in front of a Mac. For a long time I'd end most days with sore, tired eyes and a dull headache behind them. I tried the usual things — blue light glasses, night mode, taking breaks. They helped a bit, but the problem kept coming back.

Eventually I came across research on blink rate. The average person blinks 15–20 times per minute at rest. During focused screen work, that drops by up to 70% — to 3–5 blinks per minute. Without regular blinking, the tear film that lubricates your eye surface evaporates rapidly. That's what causes the dryness, the burning, the headaches.

The frustrating part: it happens automatically, without you noticing. You don't feel yourself stop blinking. By the time your eyes hurt, the damage is already done.

I wanted something that would monitor my blink rate throughout the day and tell me when it dropped — not ask me to remember to blink, but give me real-time feedback based on what my eyes were actually doing.

That's blink!. It runs quietly on your Mac, uses your camera to track your blink rate, and nudges you when it falls below a healthy threshold. It also tracks eye strain score over time so you can see the relationship between your habits and your symptoms across a session.

All camera processing happens locally on your device. Nothing is sent to a server. Your face and blink data stay on your Mac.

The free tools and articles on this site are designed to be genuinely useful — not funnels. If you come here, use the tools, and never buy the app, that's fine. The content is here because eye strain is a real and underserved problem and we want to help with it.

blink! is a one-time purchase, no subscription, no ongoing costs.