One of the features of Time Out is the ability to detect natural breaks, i.e. when your Mac is idle, not being used.

Time Out looks at mouse/trackpad and keyboard activity to detect this, but for privacy reasons, macOS requires your approval to see keyboard activity. The app doesn’t look at what you’re typing, just that keys are being pressed.

If you don’t want to authorize this, that’s fine; either Time Out can just watch for mouse/trackpad activity, or you can change the natural break detection method in the Advanced settings in the app:

You can disable idle detection entirely from that menu if you wish. There’s also a popup menu to choose how long the computer should be idle before considering it a natural break.

When you first launch Time Out, the second page of the Setup Assistant includes instructions on how to authorize idle detection. It’s pretty simple, though a number of steps to navigate to the right place:

1. Open System Settings.

2. Go to the Privacy & Security pane.

3. Go to the Accessibility page.

4. Time Out should be listed; if it isn’t, click the + button below the list to find and add it.

5. Toggle the switch next to Time Out to be on (dot on the right).

 

Easy!