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Pester 1.1b18

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(15) 4.85

Simple alarm clock and timer (beta). Free

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2.2 MB (Beta)
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Nicholas Riley

Pester is designed to let you set, dismiss or snooze an alarm or timer as quickly and painlessly as possible, entirely from the keyboard if you wish. Alert options include sounds, speech, Growl and OS X notifications. Use Pester to remind you to catch the bus or attend an upcoming meeting.

What's New

Version 1.1b18:

Work around a bug in OS X 10.8 and 10.9 which prevented speech voice changes from taking effect.
Fix an issue introduced in 1.1b17 which prevented changes to the sound output device in Preferences from taking effect, or the Preferences window from being displayed after changing the sound output device.
Improve clarity and consistency of time remaining display in Pester’s Dock icon. (Build 56: Fix a memory leak introduced by this change.)
Fix an issue in which the time remaining would not display in Pester’s Dock icon on OS X 10.8 and later until you toggled the option in Preferences.
Permit entry of midnight as "0" (previously you needed to use "00" or "24".)
Update Read Me for changes in Pester 1.1.
Improve display of Read Me.

Version 1.1b18:

Work around a bug in OS X 10.8 and 10.9 which prevented speech voice changes from taking effect.
Fix an issue introduced in 1.1b17 which prevented changes to the sound output device in Preferences from taking effect, or the Preferences window from being displayed after changing the sound output device.
Improve clarity and consistency of time remaining more...

Requirements
Intel, OS X 10.6 or later

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Pester User Discussion (Write a Review)

ver. 1.x:

(15)

Your rating: Now say why...

Overall:

(15)

sort: smiles | time

+16

Maeric reviewed on 05 Feb 2014

I've been using this for over a year and Pester has become indispensable. What I needed was a reminder app to alert me to bill paying, picking up my son at school, appointments, projects due, kitchen food, ebay bids, ... whatever I need to remember. So while I guess this could be considered an alarm clock, it is more about creating both one-time and repeating Reminders.

I tend to set the alerts to overkill by bouncing the Dock icon, displaying a message, playing a tune, and speaking the alert message. Because I'm not a clock watcher and I get distracted by my work projects, this gets my attention. Plus I can click a snooze feature to re-remind me of the alert if I'm not ready to deal with it yet.

Lastly, I can save all my reminder messages in a list to choose again later, as well as delete my "one-time" reminders. Pester's interface is flat and ordinary—which would be nice to see improved—but it sure gets the job done.

[Version 1.1b18]

1 Reply

Nicholas Riley (developer) replied on 06 Feb 2014

Thanks, I’m glad Pester is useful for you! I updated the description a bit to make it clearer.

+42

Runty reviewed on 20 Oct 2012

Very useful app, particularly the repeating function.
Small wish -- it would be very nice to be able to make our own time presets, so no need to type in commonly used times.

[Version 1.1b15]

+25

Tommy-Montag reviewed on 28 Aug 2012

I stumbled upon this by accident, testing out various timer applications. Given my past experience, I thought just a simple countdown timer would suffice.

However, when I was trying out Pester, I realized that oftentimes, when I use a simple countdown timer and it goes off, I have long forgotten what it was I was attempting to time! Usually this involves cooking or baking and by the time I figure it out, whatever it was I was making is ruined.

Pester allows you give the activity being timed a name so that immediately sold me.

I also appreciate the relatively small memory footprint of ~ 30mb.

[Version 1.1b15]

1 Reply

+42

Runty replied on 28 Oct 2012

It's just 11.8 MB on mine, with one active repeating alarm.

Starfishcom reviewed on 14 Mar 2012

exactly what I was looking for THANX!!!!

[Version 1.1b14]

-2

iminlalaland reviewed on 14 Jan 2011

Simple enough for everyone to use but that's all that it has.

[Version 1.1b12]

-1

+20

aljuk reviewed on 12 Nov 2008

Perfect, and brilliant!

Thankyou.

[Version 1.1b7]

+18

ZZamboni reviewed on 15 Feb 2008

Really nice timer program. The system-wide hotkey makes it very easy to set up new alarms, and the ability to handle multiple timers simultaneously is very useful, as is the variety of ways in which the notifications can be made.

[Version 1.1b7]

Fredducker commented on 25 Nov 2007

I don't understand why half the commands in the main window are greyed out and I cannot modify them - for example the "alert sound" menu is greyed out and cannot be modified, but also the "do script" - "speak message" and "wake up computer" commands are totally greyed out and cant be clicked on and off.
Don't download this unless it's not an important appointment you have to go to, or you can spare time to read the help files for a program which should be intuitive and easy to use!

[Version 1.1b5]

5 Replies

Nicholas Riley (developer) replied on 25 Nov 2007

Sorry, these features are not implemented yet. This is just an interim Leopard update; I hope to have them finished at some point in the future.

-5

Fredducker replied on 25 Nov 2007

So what's the point in putting up for download a half-baked program? Some people like me clicked the link because they needed something to download and install and be sure they could use it as an alarm clock and actually wake up! Not to go through the hassle of downloading, installing, trying to figure out and then "oh bad luck you can't try all the features yet and have to be beta testers for me" NO! people want to download a program that is fully functional, set it up and then go to sleep and be sure it'll wake them up (or anything else). Please include in the description of the program that it isn't complete!

Nicholas Riley (developer) replied on 25 Nov 2007

You're right-leaving those controls there doesn't make much sense. I just pushed out a new version (21) which removes them until I can get them to work. If you're already using Pester 1.1b5, just choose "Check for Updates..." from the Pester menu and you should be all set.

bongoman1 replied on 01 Dec 2007

Hey Fred

Keep your hair on my friend. It's a free app that many people are happy with. Poor you, having gone through the hassle of downloading Pester and installing it. That must have killed you.

Thanks Nicholas ofr your efforts in making this available. Please ignore Fred.

+18

ZZamboni replied on 15 Feb 2008

It boggles my mind that some people can be so rude and demanding with developers that offer their work for free.

Pester is the best timer program that I have found, it does what it's meant to do and I personally found it very easy to use.

Anonymous reviewed on 12 Apr 2005

A great app. The only app i've found that has a countdown and an alarm clock !

[Version 1.0]

Anonymous reviewed on 07 Nov 2004

A simple, elegant reminder/timer.

[Version 1.0]

+51

Mutant had trouble on 27 Dec 2011

Pester has a bizzare issue of being unable to set near-term timers. An example:
http://cl.ly/1M3R1D0U1B0F0g0M3q0e

When I set the same day, this timer defaults to tomorrow when the reminder is only 20 or so minutes away. When I force it to today, the timer says set a time in the future.

Odd.

[Version 1.1b14]