The first launch
Open JustAPause from your Applications folder. It has no Dock icon and opens no window of its own: it lives in the menu bar, near the clock, and the welcome guide appears the first time so you can set your rhythm before anything starts counting.
- Nothing to allow. The app never asks for Accessibility, Screen Recording, notifications, the camera or the microphone. The heads-up before a break is a small window it draws itself, not a system notification.
- Open at login is optional, and lives in Settings → General. macOS only allows it for apps in the Applications folder — if the switch refuses to stay on, move the app there and try again.
- Automations ask separately. If you set one up, macOS asks for permission to control that app the first time it runs, and never before.
The app and the disk image are both signed and notarized by Apple, so macOS should open it without a warning. If it says the app is damaged or cannot be verified, the download did not finish — throw that copy away and download it again.
To see the guide again later, open the menu bar icon, then Welcome guide.
Finding your license key again
Polar emails the key the moment the payment goes through, next to the receipt. If that email is gone, you do not need to write to anyone: open the Polar customer portal, enter the email address you bought with, and Polar sends a verification code. Your purchase and its license key are waiting on the other side.
Then open the menu bar icon, choose Manage license…, paste the key and select Activate. The same sheet is in Settings → About.
If the portal finds no purchase, the address is probably not the one you paid with — a work address, or the one attached to your card. Search your mail for Polar, spam folder included, and if it is still nowhere, write to me with the approximate date of the purchase and I will find the order.
When a key will not activate
- “That license key was not recognised.” Usually half a key, or a line break picked up with it. Copy the whole key from the portal in one go; spaces around it are trimmed for you.
- “This key is already used on the allowed number of devices.” Each activation is tied to a Mac. On the Mac you no longer use, open Manage license… and select Remove key — that frees the activation — then activate on the new one. If that Mac is gone, tell me and I will release it.
- “Could not reach Polar.” The check is a plain HTTPS request to Polar; a VPN or a company firewall is the usual reason it does not arrive. Once activated, the app re-checks quietly in the background and keeps working offline for up to seven days.
When a break does not arrive
Most of the time this is the app doing its job. A meeting, a call, a shared screen, a video or a full-screen app holds a break back rather than landing on top of it, and so does being away from the Mac. You can change every one of those rules in Settings → Smart pause.
Otherwise, open the menu bar icon: if breaks are paused, the menu says so and offers to resume. Settings → Breaks holds the intervals themselves, and the Preview break button there starts one immediately, which is the quickest way to tell whether the schedule or the display is at fault.
Updates
Just a Pause checks a signed update feed once a day and downloads new versions from GitHub. Settings → About has both switches and a Check for updates now button, and you can turn the automatic check off entirely.
Removing Just a Pause completely
There is no installer and no background helper, so removing the app is dragging it to the Trash plus two folders. In order:
- Free your license first. Open Manage license… and select Remove key. This releases the activation so the key works on your next Mac. A lifetime license does not expire, so keep the key.
- Turn off Open at login in Settings → General, then quit from the menu bar icon.
- Drag JustAPause from your Applications folder to the Trash.
- In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder… and open ~/Library/Application Support/JustAPause. This is the folder the privacy page mentions: your break history in stats.json and any background images you added. Delete it.
- Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.adrianviziteu.JustAPause.plist, which holds your settings and the license key, and the folder ~/Library/Caches/com.adrianviziteu.JustAPause if it exists, where downloaded updates are kept.
That is all of it. Nothing is left in your login items, nothing runs in the background, and nothing about the removal is reported anywhere. If you are leaving because something did not work, the refund stands for 14 days, no reason needed.