Sand

sand is a linux daemon for countdown timers, and a command-line client for interacting with it.

$ sand start 5m
Timer #1 created for 00:05:00:000.

$ sand s 1h 30m
Timer #2 created for 01:30:00:000.

$ sand ls
     ID  Remaining
 ▶   #1  00:04:44:580
 ▶   #2  01:29:54:514

$ sand pause 1
Paused timer #1.

$ sand ls
     ID  Remaining
 ▶   #2  01:29:29:447

 ⏸   #1  00:04:25:017

$ sand cancel 1 2
Cancelled timer #1.
Cancelled timer #2.

$ sand ls
There are currently no timers.

A sound will play and a desktop notification will be triggered when a timer elapses.

Why not use your phone?

• I'm generally on my laptop more than my phone.
• I find it much faster and more convenient to hit super+enter to open a terminal and type a short command than to unlock my phone, navigate to the clock app, and enter the duration on the touchscreen.

Why not use something like sleep 600 && mpv elapsed.flac?

Basically, a bunch of minor useability improvements.

• sand start 10m is less typing
• If you're anything like me, you dislike having a bunch of open windows cluttering your workspace, making it difficult to find things. Since sand runs as a daemon, you can start a timer from a terminal, immediately close the terminal, and the timer will still be running in the background. Alternatively, you can use your favorite graphical laucher or command runner.
• You get a convenient syntax for minutes and hours, so that you don't have to multiply by 60 or 3600 in your head to figure out how many seconds you need.
• You get the ability to see how much time is remaining. Important feature IMO!
• Sand handles suspend/sleep

If you're an ultra-minimalist who prefers cobbling solutions together using tools that come stock with your distro, this might not be for you. If you like convenience and good UX, this is for you.

Installation

Arch

You can install using the PKGBUILD for sand-timer-git in the root directory.

Build and install from source

Sand should work on most distros. It's been tested on Arch and Ubuntu. Please let me know if it works on your distro so that I can update this list!

1. Make sure you have the dependencies:
   • ALSA development libraries, for audio:
     • on Arch: alsa-lib
     • on Debian/Ubuntu: libasound2-dev
     • on Fedora: alsa-lib-devel
   • cargo, for building. Obtain via rustup to ensure that it uses the correct toolchain.
   • systemd (technically optional, but use without it is not yet supported)
2. make
3. sudo make install

Setup

After installing, you'll need to enable and start the service.

$ systemctl --user daemon-reload
$ systemctl --user enable --now sand.socket

To see notifications, you'll need a libnotify compatible notification server. Desktop managers like Gnome and Plasma generally come with this built in, but if you use a stand alone window manager you'll need to choose and install one yourself. You can find a list of potential options here. I use swaync.

To check everything's working correctly, you can type:

$ sand start 0

You should get a sound and a notification immediately.