Water and Stand-Up Reminders for Mac That You Can't Unsee: A Tank and a Shrimp on the Edge of Your Screen

Short answer: reminders you can dismiss get dismissed. Objects you can see don’t. That’s the whole design idea behind FavTray’s two newest tools. Hydrate is a water tank on the edge of your screen. Move is a shrimp that curls the longer you sit. Neither is a notification; both are things that look different when you’ve been ignoring them. This post is how they work, what the notch does when you act, and why we built them as objects instead of alerts.

Shipped in FavTray 1.11, September 2026. Written by the person who built them, so read the enthusiasm accordingly.

The problem with a reminder

Every hydration app and every posture app works the same way: a timer fires, a banner appears, you swipe it. The banner has no memory. At 4 p.m. it looks identical whether you drank six glasses or none, whether you stood up at 3:58 or have been in the chair since lunch. Your Apple Watch does the same on your wrist — one minute an hour, regardless of what you’re doing.

An object is different. A tank at 1,150 of 2,000 ml at 4 p.m., with a dashed line showing where the day should be by now, doesn’t need to say anything. A shrimp fully curled into a ball, orange, is a posture you recognise in your own back before you read the number.

Hydrate: the tank

A thin panel lives on the left (or right) edge of the screen — 28 points wide when collapsed, showing today’s water as a level. Hover and it opens into a tank:

• Waves, and a slosh when it opens.
• A dashed pace line: where today should be by this hour of your office day. Teal when you’re on pace, orange when a glass behind. That’s the only alarm.
• Three buttons — glass, cup, bottle — with sizes you set. The cup starts at 100 ml and each further tap adds 50, for sips.
• Drag the water: up adds, down pours out, 25 ml at a time. Corrections are negative entries, so undo is always one click.
• Past the goal the tank stays full and the buttons keep working — there’s no cap and no scolding.

Reminders fire every 90 minutes (adjustable), only inside your office hours (shared with Eye Rest and Reminders), and are dropped, not queued, during meetings and screen shares. Logging a glass moves the next reminder; hitting the goal ends them for the day.

Pro history: a GitHub-style 12-week grid, one square per day; your streak (a streak day is 80 % of goal, and an in-progress today never breaks it); your best window of the day; an hourly histogram of when you actually drink.

Move: the shrimp

The other glyph on the dock is a shrimp. Upright when you’ve just stood. As the minutes pass it curls, one segment at a time, until at the threshold (60 minutes by default; 30–120 in settings) it’s fully shrimped and the card turns orange.

No camera, no sensor. The sitting clock runs off keyboard and mouse activity your Mac already reports to any app. Three quiet minutes during office hours counts as standing — you walked away — and the clock resets itself. Guess wrong? “I didn’t stand” puts it back.

At the threshold the notch asks once per sit. Tap I stood up and the shrimp hops, confetti falls, and a line rotates: Unshrimped. Spine says thanks. Stretch counts. Good. Again in an hour. Beat your best day this month and the whole island turns to sea; the shrimp swims a lap.

Pro history: stands per day, longest sit, and a 30-day grid in coral. Most people’s worst hour is three to four in the afternoon. Now you’d know yours.

What the notch does

Both tools report to the same place: one card under the camera, the same shape for everything FavTray has to say.

Moment	What you see
Time for water	Orange ask: a drop, today’s bar, +250 ml / 15 min
+250 ml	A drop lands in two rings; the bar fills
2,000 ml. Done.	The island floods — water surges in with a slosh, glasses clink, bubbles rise, and it stays full until the card closes
2,250 ml. Done.	A trophy pops with confetti; the next glass is a medal, then a crown…
7 days running	A row of candles lights along the island’s floor, one per day, flames flickering
Unshrimp yourself	Orange ask: the curled shrimp, minutes seated as a bar, I stood up / 5 min
Unshrimped.	The shrimp hops; confetti
New record: 9 stands	The island becomes sea; the shrimp swims across

You can play every one — it’s a live recreation on the page, not a video. With Reduce Motion on, each becomes a plain one-line card.

Why objects beat alerts

Three reasons, all boring, all true:

1. State is visible without attention. You don’t check the tank. You see it, the way you see the time on the menu bar, and the pace line makes “behind” a colour rather than a calculation.
2. The reward is bigger than the ask. The reminder is a small orange card. The flood, the hop, the candles — those are for the thing you did. Every other app inverts this: loud nag, silent success.
3. It knows when to shut up. Office hours, calendar, screen share. A water reminder during your demo is a bug with a marketing name.

Try it

Hydrate and Move — the tank, the shrimp, the asks and the cheers — are free on every FavTray install, with up to 10 logs a day in each. Unlimited logs and the history are part of the $4.99 Lifetime license. Download FavTray; everything is unlocked for 7 days with no card. Then leave a glass of water next to your keyboard and see what the tank does to it.