Press kit

In one paragraph

Most desk workers have heard of the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Almost nobody does it, because remembering to rest your eyes takes exactly the attention you are trying to protect. 20-20-20 Vision is a free Windows app that removes the willpower from it. It sits in the system tray, cues a short break on your schedule, and guides the rest so it lasts the full twenty seconds. There is no account, no cloud and no telemetry.

The problem

71% of desk workers say eye strain is hurting their productivity, according to Allwork.Space research published in February 2026. Digital eye strain has been described as the fastest-growing workplace ergonomics issue of 2026, driven by hybrid work, multi-monitor setups and screen days that run past eight hours.

What makes it unusual is that the cost is almost never attributed correctly. A bad chair announces itself as back pain. Eye strain announces itself as an afternoon where you read the same paragraph three times and conclude you are tired. So it is never raised, never escalated, and never appears on anyone's list of things to fix.

The countermeasure, the 20-20-20 rule, is standard optometric advice. The gap is not awareness. It is execution.

What it does

• Reminds you every 20 minutes to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds, with a guided countdown so the break lasts the full twenty seconds rather than a glance.
• Runs on your hours. Active-hours scheduling and a quiet period keep it to your working day and silent outside it.
• Stays out of the way. It lives in the system tray with a countdown to the next rest, and a heads-up prompt before each one.
• Looks and sounds how you want. Six themes, six sounds, adjustable intervals, and a four-step setup wizard that takes about twenty seconds.
• Keeps your statistics. Streaks, rests taken and screen time, computed and stored on your own machine.

All of the above is in the free app, permanently, with no sign-up.

The part that answers "why not just set a timer?"

A plain timer interrupts your presentation, your standup and your game, and you learn to dismiss it. Pro is the tier that solves that, and it is where the genuinely difficult engineering sits: auto-pause for fullscreen games, video and presentations; pausing while your camera is in use for Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Meet; pausing whenever a program you nominate is running; and idle awareness, so a rest is not counted while you are away from the desk.

Pro is a one-time $15 purchase, not a subscription, and it starts with a free trial. On the free tier, active hours and a quiet period are the way to keep reminders away from known busy times.

Privacy

20-20-20 Vision has no user accounts, no cloud sync and no telemetry. It works fully offline. The usage statistics it shows you are computed and stored on your own device and never leave it. There is no server for them to go to.

In a category where the norm is an account, a subscription and a data-sharing policy, this is a genuine differentiator and a usable angle on its own.

For workplaces

20-20-20 Vision for Workplaces is the same application with the Pro features switched on, bought by an employer for their staff rather than by a person for themselves. It is sold direct rather than through the Microsoft Store, deployed as a silent per-machine MSI by Group Policy or Intune, and licensed per person at $2.50 per licence per month or $24 per licence per year, with Enterprise terms from 250 licences. It expects Active Directory or Entra ID, and runs without either, where a licence then belongs to a machine rather than to a person.

The reason it may be worth a paragraph of your piece is the category it sits in. Software that tells employers how their staff are behaving at their desks is ordinarily a monitoring product, and this one is built so that it could not be one, whatever anybody later decides they want from it.

• Employees have no accounts. Nobody signs up, sets a password or enrols in anything. People are matched by the Windows account they are already signed in to.
• Rest statistics never leave the machine, in any version. There is no per-person reporting to buy, switch on or ask for.
• The optional reporting is anonymous by construction rather than by policy. Each machine sends three numbers a week - reminders shown, taken and skipped - carrying no licence identifier, account, machine name, installation id, timezone or locale. They are added into a weekly total on arrival, so no individual submission is ever stored to be pulled apart later.
• Nothing is shown at all below five licence holders, so a figure cannot be attributed to one person by elimination.

That distinction is the story, and it is a stronger one than "privacy-friendly": a policy can be changed, and a set of records that was never kept cannot be recovered. The full detail is on the workplaces page and in the twelve-page workplace overview, which is written for the security review rather than for the sale.