Adding Time Out to Accessibility System Settings to enable idle detection

One of the features of Time Out is the ability to detect natural breaks, i.e. when your Mac is idle, not being used.

Time Out looks at mouse/trackpad and keyboard activity to detect this, but for privacy reasons, macOS requires your approval to see keyboard activity. The app doesn’t look at what you’re typing, just that keys are being pressed.

If you don’t want to authorize this, that’s fine; either Time Out can just watch for mouse/trackpad activity, or you can change the natural break detection method in the Advanced settings in the app:

Advanced settings

You can disable idle detection entirely from that menu if you wish. There’s also a popup menu to choose how long the computer should be idle before considering it a natural break.

When you first launch Time Out, the second page of the Setup Assistant includes instructions on how to authorize idle detection. It’s pretty simple, though a number of steps to navigate to the right place:

  1. Open System Settings.

  2. Go to the Privacy & Security pane.

  3. Go to the Accessibility page.

  4. Time Out should be listed; if it isn’t, click the + button below the list to find and add it.

  5. Toggle the switch next to Time Out to be on (dot on the right).

 

Easy!

Simon extras

Dejal Simon is a powerful and flexible website & server monitoring tool. One of the reasons it is so flexible is that in addition to the many built-in services, filters, notifiers & reports, you can extend it by using or writing custom scripts (or port sessions).

Simon comes bundled with many examples of such scripts; check out the Services, Filters & Notifiers lists and look for the items with a “Script” subtitle. You can inspect and edit those to customize them to suit your needs, or use them as inspiration for your own.

As an additional resource, the Simon site has an Extras page, which lists several more scripts that customers have contributed over the years. Some of which have later been bundled with the app, but some are only available there.

If you create or modify a script that others might find useful, please share it! Send me an email with the script attached, along with a description, and I’ll be happy to add it to the Simon Extras page.

The Simon Extras page is organized by feature kind: Service Scripts, Filter Scripts, Notifier Scripts, Report Templates, and Other Goodies (including a way to add multiple tests, an extended siren sound, and a script to monitor a FTP site). There’s also info for developers on writing custom plugins.

Installing scripts is easy:

  1. Decompress the downloaded archive, if you browser didn’t do it for you;
  2. Launch Simon if not already running;
  3. Go to the Services or Notifiers list, as appropriate;
  4. Click the New toolbar button (or via the File menu);
  5. Choose the Service Kind (or Notifier Kind) button to show the service (or notifier) page.
  6. Choose the Script service/notifier kind, if not selected by default.
  7. Click the Open Script… button and choose the script file.

The script is copied into Simon, so there’s no need to keep the downloaded file around after loading it.

Where can I find more sounds for Time Out or Simon?

Time Out comes with a number of built-in sounds that you can play as part of the Break Actions, plus it lists all sounds you have installed on your Mac, which includes system default ones, and any you have added to the standard sound folders.

It’s worth noting that you can also have Time Out play any music from your Apple Music library, too.

Find more sounds

To add more sounds, you first need to find and download them from a website.

There are many sites that offer sounds of varying length, quality, themes, etc. Some for free, some as paid offerings. Usually with previews so you can listen before downloading.

Here are a few I’ve found; note that I don’t endorse or recommend any particular site; these are just ones I encountered in a brief search. If you’re aware of or find a better site, please post in the Reddit community to share with others.

Add the sounds

Once you have the new sounds, you can easily add them in one of the standard folders to make them available to all apps that can play sounds, or add them to the “Sounds” folder within the Time Out data folder to only make them available in Time Out.

The system sound folders you can add to are in the following paths (tip: you can paste these paths into the Finder’s Go ▶ Go to Folder… command to reveal them; if the folders don’t exist, you can create them):

  • /Library/Sounds — for sounds available to all users of your Mac.
  • ~/Library/Sounds — where “~” means your home folder.

(There is a third folder, at /System/Library/Sounds, but you shouldn’t modify that.)

On the other hand, Time Out’s sounds folder is at one of the following paths, depending on which edition of the app you have:

  • ~/Library/Group Containers/6Z7QW53WB6.com.dejal.timeout/Sounds — for the direct edition.
  • ~/Library/Group Containers/6Z7QW53WB6.com.dejal.timeout.free/Sounds — for the Mac App Store edition.
  • ~/Library/Group Containers/6Z7QW53WB6.com.dejal.timeout-setapp/Sounds — for the Setapp edition.

While you can use the Finder’s Go to Folder… command to access those, an easier way is to choose Reveal Scripts from the Add Action drop-down menu. That will show the Scripts folder, which is adjacent to the Sounds folder. (I do want to make this even easier in a future update.)

Simon is much the same, except will just look in the standard folders.

I hope this has been helpful!

Does Time Out have a lifetime purchase option?

In ye olde days, software was sold once, for what would be considered nowadays to be a high price, and every year or so the developer would release a major paid upgrade, typically charging about half of the original price.

I still do this for Simon, my pro tool to monitor websites and servers for changes or failures, since that model is still common for pro apps. Though it is also available on Setapp, as part of a subscription along with hundreds of other apps.

But for Time Out, my popular break reminder app, I wanted to try something different. I introduced a “supporter” model, where people can get the main features completely free, but be rewarded for supporting ongoing development with extra features.

Unlike old-school purchases, the supporter purchases are much cheaper, only a few bucks, and for a specific period of time, 3, 6, or 12 months. The extra features can be tried for an hour at a time, or are unlocked permanently with any supporter level. The “catch”, such as it is, is that when I update the app, I may add new features that are only available to current supporters, so if your support has expired, you won’t get those features unless you renew your support. Of course, you can try them, to help decide if you want to renew.

That seems really fair to me; you can have breaks for free, or get extra features cheaply, and if you like my improvements, you can help pay for their development. Or continue using the older features forever without paying more.

Win/win — you get a useful app that is regularly improved, and I get to eat. I also don’t have to hold back major features for a big paid upgrade; I can add things whenever desired.

Even so, I occasionally get people asking about a lifetime purchase option. I don’t currently offer that, since I feel it would be detrimental to the long-term survival of the app. However, you can effectively make your own lifetime option, by purchasing multiple 12-month supporter statuses. Each one you purchase will extend your supporter status by a year. So if you envision using Time Out for the next 5 years, purchasing 5 times will extend your support that long. Or whatever duration you want to use.

Of course, it’s worth reiterating that you don’t have to pay more than once if you don’t want to. You can become a supporter at whatever level you feel comfortable with, and not pay again unless you want to show your appreciation (kinda like a tip jar). After your supporter status expires, all of the advanced features that you had when you were a supporter will remain available permanently. You’d only need to renew if I add new features in the future that you want to use.

How can I change the order of filters in Simon?

The Simon app has pages for filters, notifiers, reports and auto pause times while editing a test. These can be reordered very easily, by dragging them to the desired order.

The order really only matters for filters, since subsequent filters can refer to the output of previous ones, though others might look better in a custom order.

Simply click and drag anywhere outside a control to move a filter etc to a new position.

Here’s a looping video example:

DejalNews #83: Time Out 2.9.2 and Simon 5.1.1 released

DejalNews header

Welcome

This is DejalNews, an occasional newsletter from Dejal.

Has it been that long?!

Apparently the previous DejalNews newsletter was sent way back in June 2021! It doesn’t seem that long ago.

Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up on the Dejal site.

Time Out 2.9.2

Time Out version 2.9.2 was recently released, with several fixes and improvements.

Since it’s been so long, I should also mention version 2.9, which includes several great enhancements, including a status message in the sidebar to indicate why a break was skipped etc, the ability to schedule and exclude breaks using calendar events, support for Monterey focus, an option to hide the Pause function, new break options to pause or reset an individual break, and much more.

Read the blog post for more information on Time Out 2.9.2, and if you missed it, the details of version 2.9.

Simon 5.1.1

My pro site monitoring app also had a recent update, to version 5.1.1. It includes some important fixes.

And again, if you missed reading about version 5.1, it included the ability to disable rendering a Web Page test, the addition of an automatic data backup, support for macOS Ventura, updated example tests, and several other improvements and fixes.

Read the Simon 5.1.1 blog post for the latest update, or the version 5.1 post if you missed that.

New Dejal blog

Late last year I created a new blog for Dejal, powered by WordPress. Unfortunately that meant that the older posts are no longer on the site, but they are all available in the Internet Archive, and I have been working on updating and re-publishing the most interesting posts with tips for Time Out and Simon, on a weekly basis. So check back regularly. Or if you use an RSS reader or Apple News, you can subscribe to the blog to never miss a post.

Sinclair Trails

Back in June 2021 when the previous newsletter was published, my wife and I were living on a 5-acre homestead with ducks, chickens, feral cats, bees, etc. But just a few months later we decided to sell the homestead and most of our possessions, buy a 40-foot luxury Tiffin motorhome, and start traveling the country full-time.

If that sounds interesting, you can follow our adventures on my other blog, Sinclair Trails, where I post every weekday about a related topic, including additions and modifications to our coach, photos of our travels, timelapse videos of driving between locations on YouTube, reviews of RV parks, and photos of National Parks and other interesting places we visit.

(And if you’re only interested in the apps, that’s fine too.)

Reddit

If you use Reddit, you may like to join the r/Dejal subreddit, as a community for Dejal customers, and another support channel.

I hope you found this newsletter interesting. Let me know in the Dejal subreddit. I will try to publish another one sooner than a year or so from now!

– David

Time Out 2.9.2 released

I’m pleased to announce an update of Time Out, my popular break reminder tool.

This update includes some nice fixes and tweaks:

  • Now uses more modern ways to start the break helper, the automatically start on login option, and access the System Settings.
  • Fixed app icons not appearing in the Activity log for apps with display names that don’t match their filename.
  • Fixed a break sometimes stopping too early when using the Ask When to Start option.
  • Fixed a break not being rescheduled past midnight when a natural break occurs.
  • Added themes for the Sinclair Trails blog and YouTube channel, and updated the Tropical Rain theme.
  • Fixed the Speak Time break action script.
  • Can now use a URL of timeout://settings to open the Time Out settings window, in addition to the existing timeout://preferences (useful for scripting and shortcuts).

Want to try it?

If you are using the Mac App Store edition, you can update via the App Store app.

Similarly, if you are using the Setapp edition, it will handle that update for you.

If you are using the direct edition, you can use the Check for Updates feature in the app to update.

Otherwise, download Time Out 2.9.2 now!

Simon 5.1.1 released

I’m pleased to announce the general release of an update of my website and server monitoring app for macOS: Simon version 5.1.1.

This update includes just a few — but important — fixes:

  • If not signed in to iCloud, Simon now doesn’t offer syncing, with a message explaining that, instead of assuming it’s available and sometimes crashing.
  • Fixed a crash when dragging to reorder filters, notifiers, and reports in the test editor.
  • When loading the default data when first using the app, the services, filters, and notifiers are now organized into groups (this was previously only done when updating the data).

 

Want to try it?

If you are using the Setapp edition, it will handle that update for you.

If you are using the direct edition, you can use the Check for Updates feature in the app to update.

Otherwise, download Simon 5.1.1 now!

 

Simon tip: check notifiers

I’ve had a couple of queries about checking if a notifier is working, so that seemed like a good blog topic.

Simon is a powerful app. One of its many features is the ability to create custom notifiers, the mechanism for informing you of changes or failures on the tests. Naturally, when you configure a new notifier, or edit an existing one, you want to make sure that it is set up correctly.

This can be done very easily. When showing the Notifiers list, you can simply select the notifier you want to check (as you probably already have if you’re editing one), and click the Reload button in the toolbar, or choose the File ▸ Notify Now menu command.

The selected notifier will then be used, just like when used with a test, except that placeholder values will be used for any variables (since there isn’t a test in this case).

For example, here’s a Notification Center notification, showing placeholder values:

Notification

The importance of a good backup strategy

I received a support email from a Simon customer who had a hard drive failure, and lost their data. Worse still, they were in the process of recreating their Time Machine backup at the time, so didn’t have a backup.

That prompted me to post about my backup strategy. When you live your life and make your living on computers, there is little more valuable than the data they contain. So it is critical to protect it from a loss that could set you back years.

Fortunately nowadays most important data is in the cloud… various remote servers. For example, if you use Apple Music, your music collection is safely on Apple’s servers (well, hopefully safely). Similarly for Apple Photos, and other iCloud services. And other services like Dropbox help protect important documents… if you put them in there.

For myself, I have a multi-pronged data management and backup strategy.

In terms of data management, I use cloud services to sync my data between my devices, which has the added benefit of keeping offsite copies of the important data:

  • My documents are all stored in Dropbox.
  • My app source code is managed by GitHub.
  • My music, photos and other data are stored in iCloud.

In fact, I replaced the Documents folder in my home directory with a symbolic link to a Documents folder within the Dropbox folder, so all of my documents are safely in Dropbox. It’s not necessary, but you can easily do this via a couple of simple Terminal commands: 

sudo mv ~/Documents ~/Dropbox/Documents

sudo ln -s ~/Dropbox/Documents ~/Documents

The first command moves the Documents folder to within Dropbox, and the second one makes a symbolic link to that folder where the old Documents folder was. The sudo is needed as the OS will normally prevent moving the Documents folder; Terminal will prompt you for your password.

But that doesn’t mean that backups aren’t important too. Backups are useful to get back earlier versions of documents (via Time Machine), or provide redundancy in case a cloud service loses something, or just as a quick way to get back up-and-running. Plus, of course, protecting data like settings that aren’t included in Dropbox or other cloud syncing.

I use multiple services for backups, too:

  • I use Time Machine to do hourly incremental backups of the most important files. Useful to get back earlier versions of documents.
  • I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make nightly exact clones of my SSD main drive and spinning media drive onto backup disks. Useful to quickly get back up-to-speed if a hard drive fails, or I need to revert an obscure file.
  • I use Backblaze to make nightly offsite backups of pretty much all of my files. Useful in case of a major disaster like my house burning down, or failure of one of the other backups.

(Full disclosure, if you use the Dropbox link to sign up I’ll get more space, not that I need it, and you’ll get 500 MB bonus space. And similarly that Backblaze link will give both you and I a free month of service.)

Your data is valuable — don’t risk losing it when it is so easy to protect it!