Sleeper version 1.6 (June 4, 2009)
This should be called "Yet Another Sleep Timer For Windows", but Yastfw doesn't really roll off the tongue. But in its defense its much better than any other sleep timer I've found: it does the usual stuff like shutdown Windows after X minutes, or log off, go to standby, or hibernate, and adds a bunch of other handy tasks so I think I'm going to call it Sleeper Mega Pro Ultra Deluxe. It can:
- shut down, log off, reboot or hibernate your computer, and it does it in such a way that it won't get stuck on some screen asking if you want to save your work. So fair warning, save your work, since this will force it to close...
- stop Winamp, iTunes, VLC Media Player, Zoom Player, Media Player Classic, PowerDVD, WinDVD or even the dreaded Windows Media Player
- run some custom command
- turn off your monitor(s)
- save the world
It can do its thing after X minutes, or at a specific time of day. In other words you can use it as a sleep timer, or as a scheduler.
A screenshot:
Pretty simple: you enter a time in minutes and set the action that should happen when the countdown reaches zero (in the above screenshot, that's pausing Winamp). You press the Activate button to start the countdown, or you can test it by pressing the "test" button.
To the right are a couple of options:
- "Reset timer on mouse or kb" means it'll restart the countdown if you move the mouse or hit a key.
- "Repeat the action every x minutes" means when the countdown reaches zero it'll restart. I use this in conjunction with "reset timer on mouse or kb" to turn my monitors off after a period of incactivity, since it's much easier and more flexible than using the built-in Windows utility to do this.
- "Close program afterwards" is pretty obvious, Sleeper closes after doing its thing.
All the actions in the above screenshot are pretty self-explanatory I think, but note that the "launch a file" can be any file, meaning any batch file, executable, mp3, text file, picture, etc.
A couple of hidden features that I really need to build into the gui:
- if you put something like "1:30am" in the time area, it'll execute the action at 1:30am, instead of counting down minutes. You can also put something like "1am". You need the "am" or "pm" for Sleeper to know that you're specifying a time of day.
- if you put something like "1:30" in the time area, it'll calculate the time as hours and minutes. In other words "1:30" would mean 90 minutes (one hours and 30 minutes). Note that there's no "am" or "pm" in that, its just hours:minutes.
- If you put ":::" (three colons) in the time area, it'll execute the action when VLC closes. So set VLC to close when its done playing the movie (you do this in preferences --> playlist in VLC) and then you can have your monitor turn off or your computer shutdown when the movie is over.
- if you put "..." (three dots) in the time area, it'll do the action when Winamp either closes or stops playing. So you can shutdown your computer when Winamp stops.
I know, these should really be made more obvious, but such is life.
Feel free to let me know if you need it to control something that it currently can't, since its pretty easy to add more things to the list.
Updates:
v1.6 (June 3, 2009): added the option under preferences to "Activate on startup", meaning it starts its countdown when the program starts. I use Sleeper to turn off my monitors, so this way I can drop it in my startup folder and have it do its thing when my computer boots up.
v1.5 (May 19, 2009): gave it a facelift and added a bunch of new features.
v1.4 (May 14, 2009): added the ability to loop the action, which is useful if using it to turn off the monitor after a period of inactivity. It also now saves your settings to c:\sleeper_settings.ini. Let me know if you have some need for saving them some other way, or for disabling persistent settings.