FAQ

Answers to frequently asked questions.

Can I have Time Out remind me when to go home at the end of day?

I received a customer query asking if it was possible to have a countdown in the menubar for remaining time in the work day.

They wanted a “Go Home” reminder, that was used daily except weekends, and started work at 7 AM and finished at 3 PM.

Time Out is very flexible, so I was able to configure this for them. Here’s a screenshot of the Break Schedule page:

Time Out schedule page

An explanation of the options:

  1. Break for 1 minute, just as a token reminder of the end of day; it could be any length, or even zero to use a Break Action like a notification instead of dimming the screen.
  2. Every 1 day, to have a daily repetition.
  3. From Fixed Time 0 minutes past the hour, to align the due time to the hour (not essential, since it is ignoring idle time, but tidier).
  4. Available Between 15:00 and 07:00 on MTWTF, these are the most important options, to have the break start at 15:00 (3 PM) and end at 07:00 (7 AM) — yes, it’s totally fine to have the end time earlier than the start time. And to only use this on weekdays.
  5. As you can see, the next due time is at 15:00 (3 PM).
  6. When taking a natural break… Continue Countdown, to ignore idle time.
  7. The reset and skip options are off, to avoid adjusting the due time.
  8. When this break is due Start Immediately, this could be any option; asking to start might be useful if you need a few minutes to finish off what you’re doing.

And of course to have the countdown in the menubar, you’d include that option on the General page, possibly including the Only include long breaks option to not show any micro-breaks during the day:

General options

I hope this helps others who want something similar!

How can I send an email or text message when a break is due or done?

I recently had an interesting customer request. They wanted to send an email or text message when a break was due, in case they were away from their Mac.

So I added a couple of new scripts to the Time Out Extras page.

The first one is called Send Email, which as you might imagine, sends an email message. Download it here.

Here’s the script; after downloading it, you’ll need to edit it to replace the two instances of example@example.com with your email address; you can customize the subject and content of the message as desired:

tell application "Mail"
	set my_message to make new outgoing message
	set subject of my_message to "Time Out break"
	set content of my_message to "Time for a break...."
	set sender of my_message to "example@example.com"
	--
	tell my_message
		make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {name:"example@example.com"}
	end tell
	--
	send my_message
end tell

The second script is called Send Message, which you may be amazed to learn sends a text message (via iMessage, Apple’s “blue bubble” messaging protocol). Download it here.

Here’s the script; after downloading it, you’ll need to edit it to replace the example@example.com with your iCloud email address or phone number; you can customize the message as desired:

tell application "Messages"
	set targetBuddy to "example@example.com"
	set targetService to id of 1st account whose service type = iMessage
	set textMessage to "Time for a break!"
	set theBuddy to participant targetBuddy of account id targetService
	send textMessage to theBuddy
end tell

To install the scripts, open the Time Out settings window, select a break, and go to the Break Actions page, then click the + button and choose the Reveal Scripts menu command:

Break Actions menu

Then drag the script files into that revealed folder. Then they will appear in that menu so you can choose one of them.

As always, you can choose to use these scripts before the break is due, when it starts, or when it is done, amongst other options. If you have a long break that you spend away from your Mac, a message when it is done could be very useful:

Send Email after done

If you want to send a message when a break is due, note that if you’re away from your Mac, by default the breaks are skipped, so it won’t send the messages. You can avoid that by choosing to Continue Countdown on the Break Schedule page:

Contine Countdown schedule option

As previously mentioned, I plan to write an iOS edition of Time Out, probably later this year. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to get notified of breaks on your iPhone, even when away from your Mac. But these scripts may be useful in the meantime. Enjoy!

How can I control Time Out from another app?

Time Out supports URL schemes to control some functions:

  • timeout://break/micro/start will start the Micro break.
  • timeout://break/micro/postpone1 to postpone the Micro break by the first postpone amount.
  • timeout://break/normal/postpone2 to postpone the Normal break by the second postpone amount.
  • timeout://break/mybreak/skip to skip “My Break”; use lowercase and omit spaces and punctuation for the break name in the URL.
  • timeout://break/micro/reset to reset the Micro break.
  • timeout://break/micro/pause/1h will pause only the Micro break for one hour.
  • timeout://break/micro/resume to resume only the Micro break.
  • timeout://pause will pause breaks indefinitely.
  • timeout://pause/10m will pause breaks for 10 minutes (use “s”, “m”, “h”, or “d” units, or no suffix for minutes).
  • timeout://resume to resume after a pause.
  • timeout://settings or timeout://preferences to show the Settings window.
  • timeout://settings/advanced/console to open the Console app.
  • timeout://settings/advanced/terminal to open the Terminal app.

Let me know if you want any other functions to be available via URL.

Simon Context filter

The Context filter in Simon is a sophisticated filter that takes the previous filter’s input and match range to output some context around that filter’s output text.

It includes controls to specify the maximum number of characters before and/or after the matched range, and/or a delimiter before and/or after the matched range. So for example you can show up to 50 characters, stopping at a line break.

This filter is unusual in that it requires a previous filter to be used, and that needs to be either a Block– or Find-based filter, as those are the only ones that output the needed match range information.

The Context filter uses the Input specified in the test to determine which filter’s input and match variables to use: if you have two previous filters, you can make the Context filter look at the first one by choosing Filter1OutputText instead of the default FilterOutputText (which means the proceeding filter).

The match range is available in variables used by the Context filter, and can be used in your custom filters or notifiers if you wish:

  • {FilterMatchLocation}: the position of the match in the input text, e.g. the text between the Blocks, or the Find result. Note that the location is zero-based.
  • {FilterMatchLength}: The length of that match.
  • {FilterMatchEnd}: The location plus the length, for convenience.

You don’t need to worry about these variables for the Context filter, though; it uses them internally.

Here’s a simple example of this filter in action.

This is from a Web test that looks at the Daring Fireball site. It has a Find Required filter to look for the word “finally”, then if that succeeds a Context filter to output the enclosing paragraph. To round it out, if the Find filter fails, the Override as Unchanged failure case is used, to avoid the test resulting in a failure if Gruber hasn’t used the word “finally” recently.

Below the filters, you can see the Preview pane’s output, which you’ll notice includes the word “finally” towards the end.

Context filter

I hope this will be a useful filter for many of your tests. Simon is a powerful tool, with lots of other handy filters, services, and notifiers.

Time Out Dock icon and status item

Time Out has several handy options, some of them only available to current or past supporters, as a reward for helping improve the app.

One such option is the ability to hide the app icon from the Dock. By default, the icon is shown there, for easy access, but if you want Time Out to operate more in the background, you can choose to remove the icon.

If you do so, the second option is automatically turned on: the checkbox to show a status item on the right-hand side of the menubar. This item has further options to choose what to include there.

General settings

The status item can optionally include a variation of the app icon, the label color of the next break, or neither:

General settings

It can also include a countdown to the next break, either in a compact form like “7m” for 7 minutes, or a wider form like “07:32”, for 7 minutes and 32 seconds. In the compact form, it only shows seconds when less than a minute. That’s my favorite form, to attract attention when getting close to a break.

Alternatively, the value can show the time when the next break is due, or will finish, or how long it is. Or no value, just an icon:

General settings

There’s a further checkbox to only show long breaks in the status item, i.e. don’t show ones with a duration of less than a minute.

A further useful tip about the status item is that if you hover over it, a tooltip will appear that lists when the upcoming breaks are next due:

General settings

When the Dock icon is shown, clicking the status item will bring Time Out to the front, to show the settings window. When the Dock icon is hidden, clicking it will display a menu-like popover of the sidebar, for quick background access to the breaks and options. Clicking one will expand to the full window.

You may wonder what happens if you hide both the Dock icon and the status item. The window will display a warning message:

General settings

As the message says, if you do this, you can still access the settings window, though it’s a bit harder. You would need to find Time Out in your Applications folder and double-click it to make it active. Since the Dock is hidden, it won’t show a menu bar, so there isn’t a visual indication that it is active, but you can press ⌘, (i.e. Command and Comma together), which is the keyboard shortcut for the Settings window, to show it.

Some people like doing this, to discourage changing settings, but most people should show either the Dock icon or status item, or both.

Time Out fixed image and blog themes

I got a support request for Time Out, my popular break reminder tool, asking to display a fixed image during the break.

Time Out uses HTML pages as break themes, so it is possible to have a fixed image as a theme — in fact the default theme, Icon, does just that, with the app icon.

So one way to have a fixed image is to:

  1. Choose the Reveal Themes command at the end of the Theme pop-up menu to open the Themes folder in the Finder.
  2. Duplicate the Icon theme folder and give it a new name.
  3. Replace the icon.png file with your chosen image.
  4. Edit the index.html to adjust the name and size of the displayed image.
  5. Edit the Info.json file to give the new theme a unique identifier etc.
  6. Pretty easy. You can edit those files in TextEdit or any other text editor.

If the image is available on some website, it’s actually a little easier. I have created an example theme on the Time Out extras page:

Download the Ducks & Fish theme

You can edit a copy of this theme to use a different image:

  1. Choose the Reveal Themes command at the end of the Theme pop-up menu to open the Themes folder in the Finder.
  2. Add the Ducks & Fish theme, if not already.
  3. Duplicate that theme and give it a new name.
  4. Edit the Info.json file to give the new theme a unique identifier, and change the URL to the desired image.

(This got me thinking, and I spent an hour or so writing up notes on ways to make adding image-based themes even easier in a future version. I’m always trying to improve the app.)

While I was at it, I also added four themes to display my four blogs; these are all included with Time Out by default:

  • Dejal Blog: a theme that simply shows the Dejal blog, so you can read it during your break, to see the latest news about Time Out and other Dejal apps (doesn’t update very often, though, so probably not that exciting for a regular break).
  • Dejus Blog: a theme that shows my personal blog, where I post photos and comments every day. Could be good for a short break a once or twice a day.
  • Sinclair Trails Blog: a theme to show the Sinclair Trails blog, about my travels around the US in a motorhome, including photos and timelapse videos of driving days, photos of places we stay, and of attractions we visit.
  • Yellow Cottage Blog: a theme to show the retired Yellow Cottage Homestead blog, about the chickens, ducks, feral cats, bees, and other homestead topics of my former homestead. Could be good for a lunchtime break.

If you try those, you might want to set the Opacity to 100% on the Break Appearance page.

Time Out isn’t a web browser or feed reader, but since the themes are just web pages, these show some of the interesting things you can do.

How can I use Simon to check for an expired website SSL certificate?

I received a customer query asking how to use Simon to check for an expired website SSL certificate.

Of course, Simon is very flexible, so even if there isn’t a built-in service for this specific case, if you can do it in the Terminal, you can probably create a custom script-based service in Simon to do it, too.

There are a number of ways to get certificate information, but this is one simple approach (if you know of a better way, let me know!).

I created a new script-based service, using the basic C shell, a one-line command, and a custom variable for the host name:

Website Certificate service screenshot

I then created a new test using this service. When accessing a server with an expired certificate, the output includes a “verify return code” message of “certificate has expired“, so I used a Block filter to look at just that text (I pasted “Verify return code: ” in the Start text, and an Option-Return in the End text), then a Find Required filter to make the test result in a failure if it doesn’t find “ok“, and finally an Override Custom filter if a failure, to output the error message:

Website Certificate test screenshot

For the success case, the last filter doesn’t apply, so it just outputs the “ok”:

Website Certificate test screenshot

Want to use this service? You can easily add it yourself, or import it by downloading from the Simon Extras page.

I hope you found the techniques in this post helpful.

How can I add lunchtime & night breaks to Time Out?

On Twitter, Abbey Jackson asked:

Sure! Here’s the Schedule page for my Time Out preferences, showing my Lunchtime break configuration:

Lunchtime schedule screenshot

There are two important steps to do this: firstly, set the frequency to Every 1 day, and secondly, use the Available options to set a fixed start time of noon. In my example, I have this break only occur on weekdays. I also have the natural break option set to Continue Countdown, since I want the break to start immediately, not get pushed back due to idle time.

Didn’t realize that you can set daily breaks? Yep! Click, arrow, or tab to the units of the duration (“Break for“) and frequency (“Every“) fields to change between various units: seconds, minutes, hours for the duration, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years for the frequency.

As a bonus, here’s my Night break, that tells me to go to bed:

Night schedule screenshot

This is similar, but a longer duration. And yes, I did go to bed rather early when this screenshot was taken, as I usually got up at 05:30 (but didn’t get to my Mac till after breakfast).

Hope this helps!

Can I add Time Out breaks to my Calendar?

I had a customer wish that Time Out could track breaks taken in their Calendar app. That is definitely an interesting idea, so I added it to my feature concepts list for consideration in a future version, but it occurred to me that we could probably do that now with AppleScript actions.

As you may know, Time Out has the ability to perform various actions before, during, or after a break occurs. I made two AppleScripts based on Apple’s sample code for the Calendar app, and added them to the Time Out Extras page.

Download the scripts now.

The “Add to Calendar Start” script creates a new “Time Out break” event in the first available calendar, at the current time, with a duration of an hour. To use this in Time Out, install it as normal (reveal the scripts folder via the + button on the Break Actions page, and add the two scripts there), then add an action set to be performed “After Start”.

The “Add to Calendar End” script finds that event (assuming it is still within that hour), and updates the end time to the current time. So to use this, add an action set to be performed “After Any End” (i.e. when the break finishes, done or not).

Here’s how it’ll look in Time Out (with a couple of sound actions for good measure):

Time Out actions

If you want to add the events to a different calendar, you can edit the scripts (I included a commented out example). Just make sure you change both the same way.

I may add a more integrated calendar feature in the future, but in the meantime, it’s great that such enhancements can be done immediately. I hope this is helpful to some people.