Why Oithere talks to you
A notification gets swiped away before you read it. A voice reaches you mid-scroll. That is why your coach speaks out loud.
Every app on your Mac can send a notification. That is the problem. By the time you have drifted into a feed, you have already trained yourself to dismiss the little box in the corner without reading it.
A focus tool that works through notifications is competing with every other notification. It loses.
A voice lands differently
When someone says your name across the room, you look up. You do not decide to. That is the moment Oithere is built for.
After you have spent a while on something unrelated to your intention, your coach speaks up, out loud. While it talks, Oithere lowers the sound from your other apps so the line is heard, then brings them back. A panel appears with the same words and three choices: back to work, it is relevant, or take a real break.
It happens once. Then it is quiet again.
Not a chime, a sentence
A sound alone tells you something happened. It does not tell you what.
Your coach says what it sees and what you said you would do. Something like: cat videos, and the report is still waiting. The line is written for that moment, from what is on your screen and the intention you named. No two nudges are meant to sound the same, because a line you have heard fifty times is a line you stop hearing.
When you would rather it didn’t
Some days you are in a shared office. Some days you are on a call. Turn off Speak nudges in Settings and the panel still appears, silent. You keep the coach; you lose the voice.
Most people leave it on. Being spoken to is a little uncomfortable, and that is exactly why it works.