A customer said that they play music via YouTube, and wanted to silence it during their breaks. Time Out is very flexible, so I was able to come up with a solution for them, using Automator workflows as Break Actions.
I created three workflows, that you can download from the Script Actions section of the Time Out Extras page. Here are direct download links for your convenience:
- Volume 25% — sets the Mac system volume to quarter level
- Volume 50% — sets the volume to halfway
- Volume Muted — mutes the sound
You can of course edit these in Apple’s Automator app to choose different volume levels.
To install them, choose Reveal Scripts from the + menu on the Break Actions page in Time Out:
Then decompress those actions and add to the revealed folder in the Finder. They will then appear in that menu so you can use them with a break.
Here’s a fancy example, where Time Out will flash the screen 10 seconds before a break is due, play a bell sound 5 seconds before the break is due, mute the volume once the break fades in, set the sound volume back to 25% level once the break ends (whether done, postponed, or skipped), and finally play a different bell sound 1 second after it is done (but won’t play if postponed or skipped):
I hope you find this helpful.