Comments on: Simple Countdown Timer for Windows

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:47:37 +0000

@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.

By: Lubomir

Lubomir — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:42:42 +0000

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.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:17:00 +0000

@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.

By: Lubomir

Lubomir — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:54:56 +0000

@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.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:01:26 +0000

By: Esteban Kampman

Esteban Kampman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:00:14 +0000

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.

By: eGFI – For Teachers » Marshmallow Design Challenge

eGFI – For Teachers » Marshmallow Design Challenge — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:43:23 +0000

[...] the countdown time. For Shareware Windows applications, consider http://www.timeleft.info/ and http://www.orzeszek.org/blog/2009/08/21/simple-countdown-timer-for-windows/. For a Mac, consider, [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:50:51 +0000

@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.

By: Janice

Janice — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:39:27 +0000

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.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 07:35:03 +0000

@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.

By: VJ

VJ — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:50:17 +0000

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!

By: vutqy

vutqy — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:00:05 +0000

Oh cool, an offline e.ggtimer.com

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 30 May 2011 23:18:49 +0000

@Greg: That’s a good idea. I think I have to make it a feature for version 2.0.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:03:05 +0000

I copied the data to my windows folder, so now I can just use “timer 15″ to run a timer for 15 minutes :D

By: anon

anon — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:56:06 +0000

This is perfect. Simple, clean, easy to use, Thanx for saving me the time of writing this myself!

By: James from NYC

James from NYC — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:15:16 +0000

Just what I was looking for — clean, simple and easy to use. Great job Orzeszek! Thank you.

By: Ranjani Jain

Ranjani Jain — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:14:09 +0000

Just what I was looking for. A simple basic countdown timer to display time left for a break during a training. Great job – thanks!

By: Aaron Siirila

Aaron Siirila — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:57:51 +0000

Great program! Simple and beautiful! The Win 7 progress bar is a nice touch. Thanks much.

By: Cristian

Cristian — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:09:18 +0000

Just what I was looking for. So simple and useful.
Thanks from Chile

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:22:33 +0000

@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.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:43:20 +0000

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. :-)

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:53:03 +0000

@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.

By: Farzad

Farzad — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:38:39 +0000

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

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:12:43 +0000

@Kenn: It is possible.

Follow the instructions under ‘Can I create a shortcut to time a certain time?’ at http://www.orzeszek.org/dev/timer/faq/, except put ‘8 hours’ instead of ‘5 minutes’.

Then move the newly created shortcut to your Startup folder in your Start Menu. On Windows 7 and Windows Vista machines, this folder should be at C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

Orzeszek Timer should now start when Windows starts, and it should countdown from eight hours.

By: Kenn

Kenn — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:59:11 +0000

Hey Chris, nice timer. I’d like to add this to my Startup folder and have it execute automatically (an 8-hour countdown) when Windows boots. This is to remind me to reboot my machine after the 8-hour time period. Is this possible?