A focus timer that lives in your Mac's menu bar.
Matinee is a Pomodoro-style focus timer for macOS. It sits in the menu bar and counts down your work sessions and breaks. Later versions will add app and website blocking and daily stats on where your time went (see the plan). It's a companion to Marquee from the same developer.
- Menu bar timer: start, pause and stop focus sessions and breaks from the menu bar, with the countdown shown next to the icon. Focus and break lengths are adjustable.
- Break reminders: when a session ends, a full-screen overlay reminds you to stand up, drink water, rest your eyes, stretch, or anything you write yourself.
- Caffeine mode: keeps your Mac and its screen awake while the timer runs.
- Automatic updates: Matinee checks for new versions once a day. When one is out, a red dot appears on the menu bar icon and a notification lets you install it in one click.
Everything stays on your Mac. Matinee has no accounts and no analytics.
Requires macOS 27 or later.
- Download the latest
Matinee-<version>.dmgfrom Releases. - Open it and drag Matinee onto Applications.
- Open Matinee from Applications. The first time, macOS says it can't verify the app because it isn't notarized yet. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. You only need to do this once; updates open normally.
Change MARKETING_VERSION in project.yml and merge to main. GitHub Actions builds,
signs and publishes the release with a DMG and the update feed. Setup and details are in
docs/RELEASING.md.