EggTimer 2 for Alfred

by Carl Smith (@CarlosNZ)

v2.0 (What’s new?) | 22 March 2013

Welcome to the new-and-improved™ EggTimer 2 for Alfred. EggTimer is a comprehensive timed notification system for Alfred. You can set multiple timers and alarms, with snooze, repeat, or auto-repeat functionality.

Please note that EggTimer installs a startup item in OS X’s launchd daemon to check for and resume existing timers and alarms. This will consume no ongoing system resources other than running a short script at startup. You will be prompted to approve or deny the installation of this when you run EggTimer for the first time.

Quick Start

The simplest way to access the functions of EggTimer is to use the keyword timers. This will bring up a list of options available to you, as well as showing you any currently running timers or alarms (see screenshot above). I would recommend assigning a hotkey to this action for quick access. (Just edit the Hotkey item in the workflow’s configuration pane in Alfred.)

Full Feature Overview

A list of all the keywords available, and what they do:

timers

The main “menu”, which shows a list of currently running timers and alarms, and provides the option to start a new timer or alarm. To stop a currently running timer, select it while holding down the “option” key.

timer MINUTES Your Reminder

Create a basic countdown timer. You can also use HOURS:MINUTES for the duration.

Once the timer completes, it will display a notification (either Growl or Notification Centre, depending on your setting) and play an audible “alarm clock” sound.

timer every MINUTES Your Reminder

Create a timer which automatically repeats at the specified time interval. Again, HOURS:MINUTES is allowed. Note: to stop an auto-repeating timer, you’ll need to option-select it from the timers list (as mentioned above).

alarm TIME Your Reminder

Set an alarm for the specified time. The TIME format is fairly flexible, so all the following should work:

You can also add daily or hourly after the time to set a repeating alarm. eg. “alarm 4pm daily Time to stop work.”

repeat [MINUTES]

Repeat the most recently finished timer for the specified duration. MINUTES is optional — it will use the timer’s previous duration if omitted.

snooze

Snooze the most recently finished timer or alarm for a pre-determined number of minutes (default is 9).

snooze set MINUTES

Set the number of minutes for future snoozes. The current value is shown in Alfred results.

recent

Display the ten most recently-completed (or stopped) timers and alarms. Select one to relaunch it. (Or option-select to delete it from history.)

[Note: the keyword recent is used in a number of other popular workflows, so you may find this clashes and causes a confusing list of results. You can change it to something else (e.g. finished) by double-clicking the recent item in the workflow configuration panel.]

timer help

Display this documentation file.

timer about or timer version

Show version info for this workflow.

timer change

Display changelog.

timer reset

Cancel all currently running timers and erase history (i.e. recent, last-completed).

timer nuke

Completely restore workflow to initial settings. (It will cancel all running timers, delete all working folders, and uninstall the startup item.)

And finally…

I hope you find EggTimer useful and that it behaves as it’s supposed to. If you find any bugs, or want to leave feedback or feature suggestions, leave a comment on my EggTimer webpage, the EggTimer thread on the Alfred forum, or catch me on Twitter (@CarlosNZ).

Many thanks to all the great folks on the Alfred forum, whose expertise and helpfulness has been invaluable for the development of EggTimer.

And of course, big props to Andrew Pepperrell for creating Alfred in the first place!

Credits