Mac Gems: Timebar turns your menu bar into your timer
While I often set timers with Siri on my iPhone, doing so means I need another Siri command or series of swipes and taps to check the timer’s progress. When I’m at my desk working, I prefer a simple onscreen timer. Whimsicalifornia's $3 Timebar (Mac App Store link) is a nifty timer app that lives in your menu bar. Actually, lives isn’t quite the right word: Timebar consumes your menu bar—but in a good way.
To use Timebar, you simply click the Timebar icon in your menu bar (it’s the one that looks like a stopwatch, which makes it easy to confuse with the Time Machine icon), and then you drag a slider to set the length of your timer. Click Start, and the background of your Mac’s menu bar turns blue, fading from right to left until the timer hits zero—much like any standard progress bar. When the timer runs out, you’re alerted with a dialog box and, optionally, a sound.
Timebar's popover controls
The aforementioned slider is an unusual design choice: You can set a timer for one minute, two minutes, and then in five-minute increments up to four hours, and then in 30-minute increments up to eight hours. I understand the thinking behind this approach, but it limits your flexibility when it comes to choosing a timer length. For example, I brew my tea for four minutes, and I put some foods in the microwave for seven. I’d like to at least have the option to enter the timer duration manually.
That said, you can download a pair of Timebar extras for setting timers of any length using Alfred or Terminal. And the app is scriptable with a custom URL protocol (timebar://), which means you can create your own means to control it—for example, by using LaunchBar.
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