I needed a simple countdown timer utility for Windows, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of the options available. So, I wrote Orzeszek Timer.
Just enter the time to count down in just about any format, and hit Enter to start the timer. When the timer elapses, you’ll be notified by an optional alarm.
Orzeszek Timer also supports specifying the time to count down as a command line argument, as well as the new Windows 7 Taskbar Progress Bar overlay.
You may also want to try out the excellent E.gg Timer web app by David LeMieux and Ben Lew available here.
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Nice job Orzeszek!
I wonder how it can remeber the options or which sound I want to use. Does it use registry or an ini-file?
Is it possible to set some parameters/options by command line and runs another command when it the timer stops? Something like:
Orzeszek Timer.exe 30 /nosound /run “shutdown -r -t 00″ (to restart windows after 30 minutes)
With warm regrads from a cold country, Norway
@Farzad: Orzeszek Timer uses the built-in .NET settings classes to save its settings. Those classes save the settings to a file in the users’s Application Data directory. This is a special Windows location.
On Windows Vista and Windows 7, the file is, eg, C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Orzeszek\Orzeszek_Timer.exe_Url_revyi2hd4f4z35f2oqtcd22akg12dw5y\1.6.0.0\user.config. (Note that the random characters after _Url_ may be different.)
On Windows XP and earlier systems, the file would be somewhere under, eg, C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\Local Settings\Application Data, I think.
You can specify a time to countdown from as a command line parameter, as well as that Orzeszek Timer should close when the timer runs out (as I’m sure you know). At the moment, you can’t specify any other settings or actions.
I do plan to expand the command line options for Timer soon. I’m actually taking a holiday to a cold country (Poland) just after Christmas myself, and I hope that I’ll have time there to implement some of the feature requests I’ve received.
Thank you for the timer. I wanted to test out Parkinson’s law and was looking for a timer for Windows. Yours looks great. I just do not find the off switch for a started timer. :-)
@Adrian: There’s really no off switch for a timer that’s already started. Usually, if you want to cancel a running timer you just close Orzeszek Timer altogether. Alternatively, you can click on the time, type ‘0’, and hit Enter. This effectively stops the running timer too.
Just what I was looking for. So simple and useful.
Thanks from Chile
Great program! Simple and beautiful! The Win 7 progress bar is a nice touch. Thanks much.
Just what I was looking for. A simple basic countdown timer to display time left for a break during a training. Great job – thanks!
Just what I was looking for — clean, simple and easy to use. Great job Orzeszek! Thank you.
This is perfect. Simple, clean, easy to use, Thanx for saving me the time of writing this myself!
I copied the data to my windows folder, so now I can just use “timer 15″ to run a timer for 15 minutes :D
@Greg: That’s a good idea. I think I have to make it a feature for version 2.0.
Oh cool, an offline e.ggtimer.com
Great tool!… I really wanted a tool that told me when the time was up :)
Some tweaks needed.
I am on Windows 7. I pinned the app to the task bar and also have a tray Icon. So when I close the app, the instance is retained in the memory (and task bar). If I click on the pinned icon, it now opens a new instance + tray icon.
I guess I am looking for a way to no open muliple instances. or an option to choose, multiple instances / single instance.
Thanks again!
@VJ: It took me a while to work out what you meant…
When I added the tray icon feature to Orzeszek Timer it was, sort of, meant to be a replacement for pinned taskbar icons (that is, for people not running Windows 7) to keep Orzeszek Timer running all the time.
Obviously this doesn’t work too well with Windows 7 at the moment, and I’ll have to add a single instance option to fix it… I’ll let you know.
I just downloaded the Orzeszek Timer and I can’t seem to get it to play a sound. I have Windows Vista. All that is showing on my desktop is a little box and when I right clicked to change settings I still don’t hear a sound when it goes off. It just doesn’t look right to me either. So I decided to uninstall it. Well it isn’t showing up in my programs so how do I uninstall.
@Janice: You need to extract the whole ZIP file, which includes a Sounds folder, to somewhere before Orzeszek Timer will play a notification sound. You should have options for Quiet beep, Normal beep, and Loud beep in the right-click menu after that…
Orzeszek Timer doesn’t install itself, so to delete it, simply delete Orzeszek Timer.exe.
Hello there, You have done a fantastic job. I will definitely digg it and personally suggest to my friends. I am sure they’ll be benefited from this site.
=)
@Chris how can I have a notification when I run the .exe file from cmd.
I have a .bat file which is supposed to run multiple instances of the timer.
for example
25 m
5m
25m
5m
…
and the -notification switch doesn’t work. Though the -closewhendone works.
Thank you very much for this program.
@Lubomir: There is no -notification. You can set what the notification will be by running the Timer normally. You should have options for Quiet beep, Normal beep, and Loud beep in the right-click menu…
If you don’t, you need to extract the whole ZIP file, which includes a Sounds folder, to somewhere before running the Timer.
When the .bat file is in the directory of the timer.exe file and the Sound directory there is notification as expected. Though when I have multiple calls to the timer.exe now there is only pop_up_when_done function activated only to the first call.
For example I have in mytime.bat
timer.exe 30m
timer.exe 5m
and the second call to timer.exe doesn’t popup even though the pop_up function remains checked in Options.
@Lubomir: I’ll have to look into that. I’m not sure why it would be doing that… I have exams coming up right now, so I haven’t got any time, but I’ll post an update when I figure it out.
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