Sand

Command line countdown timers that don't take up a terminal.

sand runs as a daemon in the background, allowing you to set timers without having to worry about keeping the terminal open. You can also start timers from your app launcher/command runner of choice.

$ sand 5m
Timer created for 00:05:00:000.
$ sand 1h 30s
Timer created for 01:00:30:000.
$ sand ls
#2 | 01:00:27:313 remaining
#1 | 00:04:51:340 remaining

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

I use it for remembering to get things out of the oven.

Installation

1. Make sure you have the dependencies:

   • systemd
   • libnotify
   • optionally, pulseaudio or wireplumber (for timer notification sounds)

2. Download and extract the latest tarball from the releases page

3. The install script, install_release.sh is currently only tested on Arch. It should work on any distro that follows the FHS. However, I would recommend reading it and confirming that it will work correctly on your distro.

4. inside the release directory, run sudo ./install_release.sh

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.

You can type

$ sand 0

to check everything's working correctly.

Building from source

You'll need a lean toolchain, which can be installed using elan.

Once that's done, run

$ lake build

The executable will be in ./.lake/build/bin/sand.