Easy Eyes User Guide — 11 Evidence-Based Modes, Reminders & Spatial Eye Care

Getting Started

How Easy Eyes works

Modern work demands hours of sustained near-focus staring at illuminated screens. Staring at close displays reduces natural blinking by more than half, holds the focusing ciliary muscles in continuous contraction, and locks the eyes in static gaze angles. Easy Eyes offers a quiet antidote: quick, evidence-grounded sessions designed to fit naturally into a working day.

1. Open to the Hero Recommendation

When you open Easy Eyes, the home screen immediately suggests the most appropriate exercise for your time of day. In the morning, it offers a gentle tracking exercise to awaken your ocular muscles; during peak work hours, it prompts a 20-20-20 distance reset; in the evening, it defaults to calming breathwork.

2. Pick from Three Families

If you want a specific practice, choose between Rest (far looks and warm palming), Relax (paced breathing and eyes-closed audio), or Train (smooth pursuit tracking, gaze stretches, and full blinks). Each category is accessible with one tap.

3. Follow Voice, Light, and Sound

During a session, you do not need to read small text. A warm glowing orb guides your gaze, full-eyelid animations prompt thorough blinks, and spoken voice guidance tells you when to inhale, exhale, hold, or shift focus.

4. Build a Sustainable Routine

Every completed session logs an automatic check-in. Earn tiered badges, maintain daily streaks, complete daily and weekly quests, and optionally connect with friends to rest together.

Easy Eyes home screen showing the time-aware hero recommendation and quick category entries — The minimal home interface presents one clear action based on the time of day, with immediate access to Rest, Relax, and Train groups.

Practice Catalog

The 11 evidence-based modes

Each mode is built on established ophthalmological and ergonomic parameters from the AAO, NEI, and peer-reviewed clinical studies. All sessions run under two minutes.

Rest Family — Relieve Close-Work Strain

Designed specifically for pauses during computer work, reading, and mobile screen use.

20-20-20 Break

20 seconds · Open eyes · Voice and chime · Every 20 minutes

Purpose: Relaxes the ciliary muscles responsible for near-point accommodation and prompts natural tear film replenishment.

How to do it: Look away from your screen at a physical object at least 20 feet (6 meters) away—out a window or down a long hallway. Soften your gaze and blink slowly until the completion chime sounds.

Look at a real physical object. Looking at a digital background inside a phone or headset does not change the optical focal plane.

Palming Rest

60 seconds · Closed eyes · Voice and ambient drone · 1–3 times daily

Purpose: Provides absolute darkness and gentle thermal warmth to soothe fatigued periocular muscles and reduce sensory stimulation.

How to do it: Rub your palms together until warm, gently cup them over your closed eyes without pressing on your eyeballs, and rest your elbows on a desk. Breathe slowly with the soft audio cues.

Ensure your palms completely block incoming light while allowing your eyes to blink freely behind your hands.

Relax Family — Parasympathetic and Breath Harmony

Combines autonomic nervous system regulation with eye rest to lower tension.

Box Breathing

64 seconds · Open or closed eyes · Voice and tones · 1–3 times daily

Purpose: Equal 4-4-4-4 second breath pacing stimulates the vagus nerve and stabilizes heart rate variability during stressful work periods.

How to do it: Follow the glowing orb along the four sides of a square: inhale for 4 seconds, hold full for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, and hold empty for 4 seconds over four complete cycles.

Keep your facial muscles, jaw, and brow relaxed as you hold your breath.

Coherent Breathing

121 seconds · Closed eyes · Voice and music · 1–2 times daily

Purpose: Paces respiration at approximately 5.5 breaths per minute, the resonant frequency that optimizes autonomic balance and circulation.

How to do it: Close your eyes and breathe smoothly: a gentle 5.5-second inhalation followed immediately by a 5.5-second exhalation with no holds.

Let your abdomen expand on the inhale rather than raising your chest.

4-7-8 Calm

76 seconds · Closed eyes · Voice and whoosh cue · Evening / Bedtime

Purpose: A classic calming breath technique pioneered by Dr. Andrew Weil that promotes sleep onset and deep evening relaxation.

How to do it: Inhale quietly through your nose for 4 seconds, hold your breath gently for 7 seconds, and exhale completely through your mouth for 8 seconds across four cycles.

Ideal as the final exercise before going to sleep to signal the body to transition out of work mode.

Eyes-Closed Unwind

110 seconds · Closed eyes · Voice and music · 1–2 times daily

Purpose: A complete sensory rest break combining progressive relaxation voice prompts with soothing soundscapes.

How to do it: Close your eyes, turn your device face down or set it aside, and listen to the voice guidance guiding you to release tension from your forehead, temples, and neck.

Use this as a restorative reset between lengthy meetings or writing blocks.

Train Family — Gentle Movement and Tear Refresh

Subtle extraocular movement routines and blink training for dry, static eyes.

Follow the Light (Smooth Pursuit)

45 seconds · Open eyes · Voice and music · 1–2 times daily

Purpose: Engages smooth pursuit eye movements across a 15-degree horizontal arc, exercising the lateral and medial rectus muscles without head movement.

How to do it: Keep your head still and follow the softly glowing light as it glides smoothly from left to right and back across the display.

Move only your eyes. If you find your head turning, place a finger gently on your chin to stabilize it.

Infinity Trace

40 seconds · Open eyes · Music · 1 time daily

Purpose: Smooth lemniscate figure-8 movement coordinating horizontal, vertical, and oblique extraocular muscle pairs in a fluid trajectory.

How to do it: Track the orb as it draws a slow horizontal figure-8 pattern, reversing direction midway through the session.

Maintain continuous smooth gaze without jumping ahead of the target.

Gaze Stretch

50 seconds · Open eyes · Voice and music · 1–2 times daily

Purpose: Relieves the stiffness caused by prolonged straight-ahead staring by moving gaze to eight distinct radial directions.

How to do it: Look toward each target position (up, down, left, right, and four diagonal corners) for 3 seconds, returning to center for 1 second between stretches.

Stretch comfortably without straining or forcing your eyes past their natural range of motion.

Complete Blink Reset

30 seconds · Blinking · Voice and tones · Every 20 minutes

Purpose: Directly targets dry eye discomfort by training full upper-to-lower eyelid contact to express the meibomian lipid layer across the cornea.

How to do it: Follow the animated eyelid guide: close both eyes fully for 1 second, hold closed softly for 2 seconds without squeezing, and open for 1 second across seven cycles.

Based on clinical findings by Kim et al. (2020), deliberate 10-second blink cycles significantly improve tear film stability.

Near & Far Focus

60 seconds · Open eyes · Voice and music · 2–3 times daily

Purpose: Promotes comfortable vergence and depth awareness by transitioning between near and far visual targets.

How to do it: Observe the glowing orb as it smoothly travels between perceived foreground and background positions, holding focus at each depth.

On iPhone and iPad, depth is rendered through size, brightness, and parallax cues. On Vision Pro, it utilizes spatial stereoscopic placement.

Easy Eyes Follow the Light exercise showing a glowing orb traversing the screen — Smooth pursuit tracking guides your gaze across comfortable viewing angles without head movement.

Easy Eyes breathing exercise screen showing an expanding orb with timing indicators — Paced breathing exercises synchronize visual expansion and contraction with calming audio tones.

Reminders & Timing

Establishing a healthy 20-20-20 rhythm

The greatest challenge in eye care is remembering to pause before discomfort begins. Easy Eyes provides two reminder strategies built into iOS notifications.

1. Fixed Daily Times

Set specific daily reminder alerts. We recommend choosing times that fall 10 to 15 minutes off the hour (such as 10:15 AM or 2:45 PM) so notifications do not collide with scheduled calendar meetings.

2. Workday Rhythm

Enable automatic recurring prompts every two hours from Monday through Friday during standard working hours. This provides reliable pacing throughout long desk days without requiring manual alarms.

Apple Watch Mirroring

All local notifications mirror seamlessly to your Apple Watch, giving you a subtle wrist tap to lift your eyes from the screen even when your phone is in your pocket.

The 20-20-20 Standard

Endorsed by the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the American Optometric Association (AOA), the 20-20-20 guideline suggests that every 20 minutes of screen time, you should look at a real object 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. This brief pause releases continuous accommodative muscle tension and triggers reflexive blinking.

Progress & Streaks

Gentle streaks, badges, and quests

Easy Eyes encourages consistency with calm, non-coercive habit mechanics. There are no punishing penalties for taking a weekend off.

Automatic Session Check-Ins

Every practice session you finish records a completed check-in. Your progress updates immediately, tallying total minutes, completed sessions, and active streaks.

Daily Streaks & Heatmap

The Progress screen displays your current streak alongside a calendar heatmap showing your historical consistency across weeks and months.

10 Earned Achievement Badges

Unlock bronze, silver, and gold medals as you build your practice. Milestones include First Rest, 3-Day / 7-Day / 30-Day Streaks, One Hour Rested, Explorer (trying 5 distinct modes), and Breath Master.

Daily & Weekly Quests

Optional quests provide gentle inspiration: Daily Check-in, Refresh Your Eyes (complete a blink or palming session), Take a Breath, and weekly milestones like Steady Week (15 sessions) or Half Hour of Calm.

Easy Eyes progress tab displaying goal ring, daily streak count, and calendar activity heatmap — The Progress screen brings together your daily goal ring, active streak, and earned milestone badges.

Social Accountability

Rest together with friends

Eye health is easier when practiced with colleagues and friends. Easy Eyes includes a lightweight social graph designed for gentle mutual encouragement.

Friend Codes

Each user receives a unique six-character friend code. Share your code via Messages, AirDrop, or email to connect without sharing personal contact information.

Four Leaderboard Views

Compare activity across four friendly metrics: Total Points, Active Streak, Weekly Rest Minutes, and Weekly Completed Sessions.

Privacy First

Friends see only your chosen display name, avatar color, and eye-rest statistics. No location, private habits, or device details are ever shared.

Multiplatform Support

Designed for every Apple screen

Native SwiftUI architecture tailored to each device form factor.

iPhone & iPad

Portable, tactile sessions with haptic feedback, split-screen iPad multitasking support, and fluid portrait/landscape transitions. Ideal for quick desk pauses and commute wind-downs.

Apple TV

Experience large-scale eye stretches and ambient music across the room. The wider physical display angle makes smooth pursuit and gaze compass exercises particularly expansive.

Apple Vision Pro (Easy Eyes Vision)

A dedicated spatial edition running in mixed passthrough. Practice controls float on a translucent glass panel beneath your gaze while a 3D RealityKit orb moves through comfortable room depth.

Important Optical Distinction on Vision Pro

Virtual objects inside a VR/AR headset move in stereoscopic 3D space, which provides binocular vergence and motion parallax cues. However, headset displays have a fixed optical focal distance. Virtual near-far exercises do not alter lens accommodation. For a genuine 20-20-20 distance break, remove the headset and look at a real physical object 6 meters away.

Health & Safety

Honest medical scope

Easy Eyes is created to support everyday visual comfort, promote healthy blinking habits, and offer relaxing screen pauses. We believe in complete transparency about what eye exercises can and cannot do.

What Is Clinically Supported

Taking regular distance breaks (the 20-20-20 rule) relieves sustained accommodative fatigue.
Conscious complete blinking replenishes the tear film lipid layer and reduces dry eye symptoms.
Paced resonance breathing stimulates parasympathetic activity and reduces physical strain.

What Eye Exercises Cannot Do

No eye exercises can change refractive errors such as myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, or presbyopia.
Eye exercises do not eliminate the need for corrective eyeglasses or contact lenses.
We reject unscientific claims (such as the Bates method) that promise natural vision cures.

Medical Disclaimer: Easy Eyes supports everyday eye comfort, relaxation, and screen-fatigue relief. It does not diagnose, treat, or correct vision. If you have eye pain, sudden vision changes, flashes, or new floaters, see an eye-care professional.

Frequently Asked Questions

Tips & troubleshooting

How does voice guidance interact with other audio on my device?

Easy Eyes configures its audio session to gently lower ('duck') background audio during spoken cues and restore volume immediately afterward. In Settings, you can also toggle voice guidance off or choose your preferred practice music bed.

Can I use Easy Eyes offline without an internet connection?

Yes. All 11 exercise animations, timer engines, and audio guidance files are stored directly on your device. Completed check-ins are saved to a local queue and automatically synchronize with your account when your network reconnects.

How do I upgrade from a guest session to a permanent account?

When you first launch the app, you start immediately as a guest with full functionality. In Settings, you can upgrade to an email or Sign in with Apple account at any time. All of your historical check-ins, streaks, and badges are preserved during the upgrade.

Which visual theme should I choose?

Easy Eyes includes four crystal themes: Dusk (cool slate-blue), Ember (muted copper-graphite), Warm (pale gold neutral), and Paper (light mode). All themes use low-saturation tones designed to minimize light glare and avoid fatiguing your eyes.

How often should I use Easy Eyes each day?

We recommend doing a 20-second 20-20-20 break or 30-second Complete Blink every 20 to 30 minutes during intensive computer work, paired with one longer 2-minute breathing session in the middle of the day and one calming session in the evening.

Ready to give your eyes a rest?

Easy Eyes is coming soon to the App Store for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.

Coming Soon on the App Store Read Developer Blog

One-time purchase · $0.99 at launch · No subscriptions