mac2019년 2월 26일3 min read

Boosting Focus with a Countdown Shell Script on Mac

Use a simple zsh countdown shell script with macOS notifications and a sound to apply the Pomodoro technique.

FFrank Advenoh

#count#down#shell

Contents · 8

1. Introduction
2. Demo Screen
3. Writing the Script and Configuring System Notifications
3.1 Editing the Shell Configuration File
3.2 Copying the Sound File to the Library Folder
3.3 Configuring System Notifications
3.4 Running It
4. References

1. Introduction

When I open my laptop to start studying or writing a blog post, the first place I go is usually internet news or YouTube videos rather than the actual studying or writing. And after watching for about 30 minutes, I tell myself "okay, time to start" and open Evernote.

Then, when I try to focus and get started, even after about 10 minutes I catch myself watching news or YouTube videos again. Study a bit, watch the news, repeat — and before I know it several hours have flown by. Maybe that's why writing one blog post a week never quite works out.

While reading PD Min-sik Kim's book Have You Memorized an Entire English Book?, I learned about the Pomodoro technique and decided to try applying it.

It's one of the time-management techniques mentioned in various books and online. The Pomodoro technique was proposed by Francesco Cirillo and uses a timer to focus on work for 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break.

There are plenty of related apps in the App Store and on phones, but I just wrote a shell script that's easy to run from the Mac terminal. And after 25 minutes pass, I wrote the script so that it shows a popup notification on the Mac and plays a sound effect as well.

2. Demo Screen

This is the screen where a popup runs after a 1-minute countdown.

3. Writing the Script and Configuring System Notifications

I worked in a Mac environment and used the zsh shell.

3.1 Editing the Shell Configuration File

Open your shell configuration file in a text editor, add the function below, and save.

$ code ~/.zshrc

https://gist.github.com/kenshin579/1b8dc3d9db35b6fee534569ec128e62b

To reload the modified shell configuration file in your current shell, reload it with the source command.

$ source ~/.zshrc

3.2 Copying the Sound File to the Library Folder

Copy the sound file to the user Library folder.

$ cp Clock-chimes.mp3 ~\_Library_Sounds

Clock-chimes.mp3

3.3 Configuring System Notifications

If you don't configure the notification separately, the default is the banner notification style, so the notification appears and then disappears automatically. As a result, if you're looking at another screen, you often won't even notice that a notification appeared. It's better to change it to a notification style that doesn't disappear automatically and requires you to click the close button.

Go to System Preferences > Notifications > select Script Editor, and change the notification style as shown below.