eyeBuddy

Logo

Inspiration

This project started from something really personal. All three of us have struggled with vision in different ways. One of our teammates is color blind, and the other two wear glasses after years of spending long hours in front of screens coding. We realized that this isn’t just our story, it’s something a lot of computer science students go through. We spend hours debugging, studying, or building projects, and we forget to take care of our eyes. It’s easy to ignore the strain until it becomes a real problem. That’s why we wanted to build something that reminds people to pause, look away, and protect the one thing that lets us keep learning and creating. We also wanted it to be inclusive, so even students with color blindness or light sensitivity could browse comfortably. That’s how eyeBuddy was born, a small extension made with a lot of care for people who code, study, and stare at screens all day.

What it does

eyeBuddy is a simple Chrome extension that helps students take care of their eyes while they work or study online. It lets you:

switch to Night Mode for darker screens
use Safe Reading Mode to make pages calmer and easier to read
set a Screen-Time Timer that reminds you to take breaks
see some eye exercises when your timer ends
apply Colorblind Filters for better accessibility
It’s basically a small buddy that reminds you to be kind to your eyes.

How we built it

We built it using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, powered by Chrome’s extension APIs.

Challenges we ran into

None of us had built a Chrome extension before, so we had to learn everything from scratch. We also struggled with connecting our work from different branches on GitHub and fixing merge conflicts, but we figured it out together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a working Chrome extension completely from scratch, and it’s something we can actually use in our daily studying. It makes websites easier on the eyes and helps us take breaks. We’re proud that we made something simple that encourages students to care about their vision.

What we learned

We learned how to build a Chrome extension from scratch and how to fix problems together as a team. We also got more comfortable using GitHub and learned how small accessibility features can make a big difference.

What's next for eyeBuddy

We want to make eyeBuddy work more automatically, like adjusting to the time of day or tracking how long you’ve been on your screen. We also plan to add more wellness features, such as stretch reminders and screen-time statistics. Our goal is to release it publicly so students everywhere can use it to take better care of their eyes.