You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am.
Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color.
Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.
Funny, I’m the same. I also like taking walks to think but I’ve found that I must have my head pointing almost directly down (I.e. looking at my feet). It’s also how I stand thinking in the shower, with the warm water hitting my angled neck. Maybe something beneficial about that position of the neck, or maybe just habit!
I will also have conversations in my head during my walk, I’ve done this my whole life and I’m not sure to this day whether my lips move during these or not. In any case, I must get some funny looks with head bolted to the ground mumbling to myself…
In my case, though walks help declutter my mind somewhat, for deeper thoughts, I have to write it down sitting or laying in the bed in the worst of positions. Thinking too deeply while walking only leaves me anxious in the end as I tend to get sidetracked a lot in conversation and always have to restart the conversation over and over again.
Wear earbuds like you’re on call or recording something
I've fully embraced looking insane in public. Try it some time; you won't go back.
This is how things get built for me as well. I have a standing desk and like using it occasionally but if you see me standing at it you can bet I'm doing something typical like emails or chat and not thinking deeply.
My productivity is generally measured in how much time I sit on the porcelain thinking throne first.
Truer words have never been spoken. That and planning out your day & thinking through problems in the shower.
If you delete social media, and leave your phone away from your person all day with notifications turned off, you can have these moments all the time it turns out.
Considering how much more productive these moments are for me than the bullshit I used to do on my phone and social media, it was an easy decision to make.
How do you simulate the warm water?
Oh, lol, now I get your question. Yea, it turns out the silence and lack of distractions are what produce "shower thoughts", more so than the act of showering itself.
Doing any relatively rote act like washing dishes, walking places, etc can also give rise to them. Not having a device in your hand to constantly steal your attention really helps though.
Showers are generally considered to be relaxing separately from the “shower thoughts” phenomenon.
Couldn’t the relaxation be a factor in generating shower thoughts?
I suspect that essentially none of our non-ancestors were predated in a hot spring, unlike walking etc, so there may be an environmental cue driven induced relaxation that doesn’t exist for many other activities.
Yea, you relax, and then your brain produces random thoughts about things.
I suspect it's just about getting the space to relax, which is why I frequently have thoughts when staring at the wall, or taking a walk, or washing dishes, or doing any other myriad activities which are relatively easy on brain processing.
Solitude is extremely powerful.
I find pacing to be helpful. As long as there’s not a lot of poles to walk into accidentally. So while outside walks can be more focused you do get the odd head bang.
With a faucet my good friend!
Walking the dog is my go to for thinking through problems. The dog really loves the hard problems as they get a longer walk.
I never understood this. Is this why the cubicles are always full in the office? WTF I go in there take a dump and leave while the people on each side are just silent the whole time. I can think of much better places to think.
This was me, and now I have horrific back pain almost every week. Fix what's broken before it breaks you.
My neck is screaming in empathetic pain for your future neck!
Let's not forget the people who work from bed with AR glasses and a projector pointed at the ceiling.
Gamer lean is when it gets really serious.
Sounds like you're literally the target audience for this app.
Not if there is a hard positive correlation between productivity and slouching, like they say.
Congrats on the app.
I'm seeing that "great-ai-unlock" is happening. I see in last month a lot of new software being codeveloped with claude/codex/gemini/you-name it.
Before, it was too costly to do sth like the Posture app: here, you would have to know Swift and apple apis to write such tool. Would you be C# (very good) programmer with free weekend, and an idea: no cookie for ya.
These days, due to "great-ai-unlock" your skills can be easily transferred and used to cross platforms boundary and code such useful app in a weekend or so.
Jevons paradox is indeed working (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox).
Neat app. Any tips on how you used Claude Code to develop this?
My first prompt was:
"Help me develop a MacOS app that blurs my screen the closer my mouse is to the top of the monitor"
That was my PoC to see if there's APIs Claude could find that would make this easy to do. Once I proved that worked, I asked it to instead help me devise a way to adjust that blur based on my posture. It suggested the vision framework and measuring head height.
Just kept iterating, one step at a time. Any toil I experienced, I asked it to remove or automate.
I'm not sure how you can use a laptop with good posture. An external monitor at the right height seems like a necessity.
I'm also optimistic about monitors in the form of glasses- even less effort needed to set yourself up for perfect posture. But the sweet spot problem is still very much a thing from what I've seen- can't wait until it's normal for them to have eye tracking, foveated rendering and streaming, and be wireless.
Yeah, most of my computer use is with a properly adjusted desk setup with external monitors and while it doesn’t bother me to use a laptop to jot down some notes or for a short study session, if I try to do “real” work at all I quickly become uncomfortable. A cheap folding laptop stand (which elevates the laptop enough that the middle of its screen is eye level) and wireless KB+mouse dramatically improves comfort (and productivity) but the tradeoff is that you need a table or other sizable, stable flat surface.
The exception is if there happens to be a reclined-position chair (IKEA POÄNG or similar) around; this gives back support and reduces neck craning enough to make longer sessions more viable, but it’s far from a given that this kind of seating will be available.
If you have interesting enough work, nothing else matters. I have written big complex systems while car pooling on a laptop in the passenger seat.
The reason for this app is not productivity but for posture.
When working at a desk I put my 16-inch MacBook Pro on a stand and use an external keyboard and trackpad.
I don't like adapting my monitor layout when moving between working environments.
Instead of an extra monitor, I have an iPad Pro on a stand.
I use the Nexstand K2 (well, the Chinese knockoff I got for $5), and I bent some coat hangers to attach to the top of the stand and tilt the laptop forward. I’m a tall guy, and the top of the screen is even with my eyes. Bonus is that with an X1 Carbon, the Lenovo M14 or M14d fits perfectly over the top of the keyboard.
The whole setup fits into a drawstring gym bag.
https://nexstand.io/
Laptop work is clearly not OSHA-compliant. I’m in France so it’s probably regulated a little bit more, but having a screen at eye height and a keyboard slightly under elbow height is the first line on the security analysis document (le DUERP), at least for tertiary workers. And far above “Floor must be non-slippery” and “The right to disconnect after 6pm”.
My Apple Vision Pro has all that, and it’s perfect for posture when using a MacBook.
Yeah- this and the upcoming steam frame seem like the best options today.
There's something very attractive for me personally about the sunglasses form factor.
Safer in public, draws less attention, more portable, less headset fatigue, etc.
But obviously trading quality and features.
Also AVP is like $3k, steam frame will probably be $800+, xreal are like half that
> But obviously trading quality and features.
For me it’s like settling for a CRT after trying a 4k TV in terms of visuals, but with the form factors reversed.
Except the form factors are swapped, but yes.
Isn’t the Vision Pro rather front loaded in terms of its weight distribution? Seems like you might just be trading one ergonomic problem for another.
It’s not really, with the new dual band which changes the weight distribution. If you lean back a lot it’s obviously going to rest on your face then, but that’s a good way to avoid bad posture too.
Still, it’s not for everyone. I use it with my AirPods Max comfortably, I have a sturdy neck. I don’t think my wife could pull it off.
I guess it's technically cool, but one should be aware that there is no such thing as "good posture" or no accepted definition that lends itself to good science.
slouching isnt bad, remaining in the same posture for a long time is, or at least it can lead to discomfort. people that sit up straight all the time still get back pain. i slouch all the time and i don't. The popular attachment to specific configurationa of your joints that look aeathetically acceptable os orthorexia, not science.
As my doctor used to say: the best posture is the next one.
I spend most of my time at work on a medicine ball switching between switching, kneeling and standing. At home I switch between reclined, semi-reclined, upright and standing. I think its been working great.
Lots of things people might want to monitor for such as nail biting.
Anyone else with progressive lenses just think "I already have this"?
I'm due for new glasses, so any laptop use is now a careful equilibrium between "text is burry" and "text is too small".
Yes, absolutely. One of the first things I noticed when I changed from two pairs of glasses to progressive lenses. The other thing was that, because I don't have to switch glasses to look away from the screen, I remember to focus on a distant object every so often.
Sounds like a good idea but “good posture” meaning being upright is just such an outdated and incorrect thing. Be comfortable, relax in your chairs, it’s fine.
I’ve had chronic back problems due to computer use and back posture for 20+ years. This past year I bought an adjustable height desk and an Aeron chair to try and help, but I still slouch constantly without realizing it.
I cloned this a few hours ago and started using it and it’s amazing how effective the blur is! And it’s frustrating to learn how quickly I start slouching the second I’m not paying attention.
I’ll echo what I’ve seen others saying about how cool it is to see something come about due to LLM coding that likely wouldn’t have otherwise. Glad to see you actively working on it, and I’ll be using it every day!
P.S. I’ve been an iOS and Mac dev writing Obj-C and then Swift for 16 years now, so if you run into any issues that Claude isn’t sorting out feel free to reach out to me, you can find my contact via my GitHub which is in my profile (same username as hear). Also as I’ll be using this regularly, if I come up with any improvements I’ll be sure to open a PR!
I think the idea is wonderful, but a not-audited application that uses things like the camera is a “no go” for me.
Get it notorized and ask for some money! I will gladly pay it (and I hope others will do it as well).
Awesome concept: ergonomics and/or posture monitoring is a market opportunity for heavy users.
Notarization is mostly a glorified malware scan. There's no Apple engineer auditing what's being sent for notarization. Even clever malware can evade notarization scans and be distributed as a notarized binary, it has happened in the past [0]
There's no better way for auditing such an app than having the code easily available and looking through it, and compiling it yourself. Which is already the case here.
[0] https://thehackernews.com/2025/12/new-macsync-macos-stealer-...
Your link says that Apple revoked the certificate used to sign the malware by the time the story was published.
It's literally a single .swift file. Ask your LLM to audit it.
then I need to get someone to audit the LLM, which is considerably more difficult
Do you expect this programmer is in cahoots with Anthropic?
The opposite, actually: that the code tricks the LLM.
Posturr is now notarized!
While I disagree with you, thank you for sharing your decision-making process: you're probably not the only one who thinks this way.
In general, would you pay for a notorised build of free software, if you had use for that software, even if an un-notorised build or the source code were available?
I seriously doubt that he actually would. And in that unlikely event he'd be in a miniscule minority. Not a good open source monetisation strategy.
Are you serious? It's open source. And there's less than 1000 lines total. Get Codex or Claude to review it if you're paranoid.
The thing is that how do you know at the end of the day that the compiled binary hasn't been tampered with "extra code" besides what's in the repo?
I don't even think notarization gets rid of this problem neither, so the best you can do for this is compile it yourself. Maybe I'm wrong!
Compiling it yourself is the best/only thing you can do if you really want to know what code went into a binary.
What prevents you from compiling it if it is open-source?
That's what I do with every project delivered as docker image. I rebuild the app and the image.
Go easy on the guy. Mac users are so used to overpaying for trivial functionality.
Does anyone ever reach a high level of productivity with correct posture? I can't.
Luckily there is no such thing as "correct posture".
Totally a tangent here but it amazes me how a company as big as Herman Miller could screw a product page up so much by not even having a picture of the damn product.
Lol, I see the image fine but if I click the red "Buy Now" button, I get a 404.
Fortunately, I type this, sitting in my wonderful 15 year old Embody chair so I don't actually need to buy now. Everyone is different and I never raved much about Aerons but the Embody has been very good to me, whether my posture is textbook "good" or "badly" slouched and reclined ... it supports and makes me want to sit and work. :-)
It's there, you just have to slouch to see it.
It's the first thing on the page. Your browser is doing something funky.
Something might be wrong with your client (ad-blocker, NoScript maybe?) because there a ton of pictures on that page.
Ha, yep you're right. How bizarre, wasn't a browser ad block, it was adguard dns blocking a ton of tracking scripts needed to show the images.
Word of warning: the Embody chair does not have front-to-back adjustments for the armrests. They will be pretty useless unless you like having your keyboard close to the edge of your desk.
I ditched all my HM chairs for a standard wooden chair. They just never felt right (maybe the non-forward-adjustable armrests had something to do with it), but boy are they good at selling you an expensive fantasy.
The embodiment of overpriced and mediocre
if im not sitting on my right foot with left knee under my chin my thinking takes a hit, but i also have to constantly switch how im sitting so i dont get annoyed. its hard not to slouch/melt into whatever im sitting on and i think the only way to offset all that is the gym.
This is a really cool idea. I’m a little put off with the idea that my camera is always watching me but the thought behind it is really cool.
I kind of feel the same way, but I want to try it. I’m pretty sure I have a spare webcam lying around, it could be interesting to have a “trusted” sensor for this app so that I can still keep my main webcam locked down.
Once launched, Posturr runs in the background and displays a brief "Claude Mode Active" notification.
I haven’t checked the code yet, but what does the “Claude Mode” mean? Is it a poor naming choice? It implies that the local app is somehow connected to Claude (?)
Hi - this is the author. I can explain that, ha!
Right now I'm using a vision library to detect head height which was good enough. I went down a tangent where I hooked it up to my Claude Code instance to take a screen shot and have Claude Code assess how bad my slouch was. Claude would watch a folder for screen shots, read it in, and if it detected bad posture, write to a file the program was watching to adjust blur.
I did this weird work-around so I could use my Claude Code subscription as opposed to the API.
Anyways, it was too slow and Claude was a bad judge of slouchiness. Head height works well enough!
I'll clean this up.
Cool, thanks for the clarification. Indeed it's a good and practical idea for a small app. As other comments have said, (some) people might happily pay for this app.
I luckily won't need such feedback loop anymore, had some mild lower back pain show up over 10 years ago and bought a chair without a backrest that, after 3-4 weeks of struggling, trained me to sit up straight. Now I have some random cheap office chair with a backrest, but I rarely lean back to it. Funnily, I was going to give up using that "backrestless" chair after 2 weeks of inconvenience, but decided to give it one more week and then the magic happened :-) Mild lower back pain automatically gone.
Care to share an example of this backrestless chair? Is it like a regular chair just without the backrest, or has some other differences? Does it have armrests for example, and if not - does it bother you?
I went with an overkill approach at first (as I often do :-) and bought some expensive nicely designed "active chair" / stool that was adjustable high enough so that I could lean on it even when using my desk as a standing desk. It was interesting, but not a game changer at all for me. I don't use standing desks now at all.
But what I have now is this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002FL3LY4
Just don't assemble the backrest at first. If sitting up straight, I just lean wrists on my keyboard wristpad and part of forearms on the desk, no armrests needed either.
Edit: I still use my height-adjustable standing desk, but now it's value is that I could adjust it for the perfect height for my sitting-up-straight position (so no chair armrests needed) and it's been fixed at that height for the last 7 years...
Not sure which one the parent was referring to but personalizing I've been using one of these for more than a decade at this point (I'm sitting on it right now) https://www.varierfurniture.com/en/products
The one I have does have a backrest but because of the way it's shaped you don't actually use it to slouch. It's more there to support when you lean back and want to take a break from typing or something like that.
do any more open applications like this exist? The idea seems great
Install a pull up bar in your room. It will fix your back better than anything else.
1 min plank in the morning is a big help too
While this seems to detect posture fairly well, the screen blurring doesn't work for me despite allowing what appear to be the relevant permissions. (macOS 15.1)
I've released 1.0.3 with compatibility mode to use public APIs. The blur isn't as good, but better than nothing!
1.0.4 is release with better descriptions.
I added compatibility mode that incorporates the public API. Give it a shot please. I welcome any feedback.
Works pretty well, probably too resource heavy to just always keep on.
Suggestion: give the user a shortcut key to close the app in case the blur goes haywire on them.
Hi - thanks for the feedback. I've improved CPU usage with the latest release. I'll look into a kill switch.
I wonder if this is less about “bad posture” and more about how people unconsciously optimize for stability when thinking deeply. When I’m reasoning through something hard, I tend to lock into whatever position minimizes micro-adjustments - even if it looks terrible ergonomically.
I can't seem to open it. It keeps saying "Apple could not verify “Posturr.app” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.".
I tried opening by right-cliking on the app file, holding option, etc.
I'm on Sequoia 15.7.3 (24G419)
you have to go into your Privacy & Security settings and scroll down until you see something like "Posturr.app was blocked to protect your Mac." and then press "Open Anyway"
Ohhh... Thank you!
Is this new? In previous version I could just right-click and it would open it.
This is cool, I built something similar a while back. I originally wanted the screen to dim when I slouched but I couldn't get access to dimming on OSX. I ended up just playing a noise when I slouched. It became so distracting I stopped using it.
The blurring of the screen is a much better idea.
Love it - I did something like this for when codex is done - a script runs to detect if I’m at my computer or not and then notify my phone if I walked away that it’s done - mostly so I can get back to slouching ;)
It would be great if there was something like this, but for not wearing reading glasses.
Would be cool to see integration with something like Upright Go or other sensors you place on your back that detect tilt etc.
.gitignore
> # Claude Code
> .claude/
Congratulations! I love seeing people express themselves to release things that were previously not economically viable to prioritize
Forget worrying about a 10x dev, Claude Code with the Opus 4.5 model has turned me into a 100x developer even in software stacks I'm not even familiar with. And with playwright-mcp its completely absolved the need for UX designers in my workflow because I just point playwright-mcp at an already established and A/B tested website for its UX principles. This gives me results far beyond what v0, lovable or Claude Code would come up with on its own.
Is there anyone out there who’s productive and sitting upright? Asking for me..
Guzzles my CPU, cool though! Would use if it didn't eat up half a core to boot.
I reduced the vision processing to about 10 fps as well as reduced camera resolution. I saw about an 80% reduction in CPU! Thanks for the feedback.
Black Mirror is nearly here.
lol, whenever I am hacking intensely, I am lying down on my bed with laptop tilted with the perfect angle.
I guess this app won’t catch me slouching then.
I would love this but for detecting when I'm not wearing my glasses!
“If only the world had some way to remind be to wear my glasses … like going all blurry or something.”
I get you - but making it absurd is where my brain went immediately. >.<
If I’m not wearing my glasses the screen blurs organically.
Doesn't the screen already go blurry when you're not wearing your glasses?
It's a spectrum I'm trying to avoid it getting that bad
Staying in upright posture for too long is also not good for you.
I would pay $10 for this.
That whole "good posture" thing is future physical problems waiting to happen. For 25 years, I've always put my feet up on the corner of my desk (to the left), set the seat as high as possible (or adjust the desk lower) and lean back, arms extended. Basically, I'm positioned like an F1 driver in a cockpit.
No back problems as there's no weight on my spine. No carpal tunnel issues, as my wrists are always flat. No fatigue from holding my body at right angles for hours at a time.
The downside is I look like a total slacker in the office, especially to narrow minded image conscious managers who expect me "to act professionally."
About 20 years ago they was an early XDG /Compiz plugin called ‘literal focus’ - as a joke, it only focused the focused window. It’s amusing to see this technique being used more practically.
How can you tell if a short person is slouching? Or a tall person?
I'm not the author, but I assume it benchmarks the highest height of your head, blurs from there, and updates its baseline if you ever appear higher.
Meaning that the way to have "perfect posture" is never to sit up straight in the first place :-)
It has a calibration step
If you assume a person’s chair height and desk height are both set optimally, then I guess the person’s height doesn’t matter for this detection.
One thing I learned from my physio: in your spine, everything is connected.
For example, even if you sit perfectly upright, if you have anterior pelvic tilt, it can change the whole dynamics of your spine, that the cervical segment takes a lot of load that it isn't supposed to do.
Or with bad habits you can reprogram your neuromuscular system that it uses the wrong muscles to maintain posture, that can lead a series of problems long term.
If you have back/neck pain or tension that does not resolve in 1-2 weeks, go to a physio.
Plz make a Windows version :)))
Anyone want to vibe code this to work on linux or M$
Great contrarian indicator for when people say that vibe coding is not "real development work" or economically viable/a job in the future - here is someone asking if another person can vibe code something for them that is single file of swift, the prompt could be as simple as "convert this to linux".
I don't think Linux has an equivalent of Apple's vision API, and if it does I guarantee it's not as robust and isn't baked-in to every Linux distro (the way Vision is baked-in to every Mac released after X date).
That alone will likely prevent this from just being a "convert to Linux" vibe session ... which is unfortunate, as I would LOVE to have this on Linux.
Yep, this is the bottleneck. Otherwise I would have done the prompt myself.
So now I gotta squint while I slouch!
Great, now I'll get sick eyes too
* laughs histerically