Glance

A small, keyboard-first countdown timer for Linux on Wayland. Type a duration, press Enter, and the time left stays big and readable. Shrink it into a corner while you work. GTK 4 and Vala, made first for niri.

• Type 25. for 25 minutes, or roll the wheels with a mouse, touchpad or arrow keys.
• Count down a duration, or count down to a time of day.
• When time is up the whole window turns amber and plays a short alarm.
• Peek shrinks a running timer into a corner, above every window.
• glance-timer 25m, --pause and --add 5m drive the running timer from scripts and key bindings.
• One timer, offline, no accounts, no tracking.

Install

You need Meson, Vala, GTK 4.20 or newer, gtk4-layer-shell and GStreamer.

meson setup build
meson compile -C build
sudo meson install -C build

On Arch, cd packaging/arch && makepkg -si builds and installs the glance-timer package.

TODO

• Publish the package on the AUR.
• Publish on Flathub.

Using it

Run glance-timer and type:

Type	Starts
45	45 seconds
25.	25 minutes
1..	1 hour
1.30	1 minute 30 seconds
130.	1 hour 30 minutes
1.2.3	1:02:03

Digits fill from the right; a dot moves what you typed up one unit. Enter starts. Switch to Until to count down to a time of day. The label is optional.

Where	Key	Action
Setup	digits, .	type a duration
	Backspace	remove the last key
	Enter	start
	Escape	clear
	↑ ↓, Page Up/Down, Home/End	change the focused wheel
Running, paused	Space	pause or resume
	Enter, Escape	stop
Time's up	Enter, Escape	dismiss

Closing the window while a timer runs only hides it. Run glance-timer again to bring it back.

Command line

Every call talks to the one running Glance; the first call starts it.

glance-timer                              show the window
glance-timer 25m                          start 25 minutes now
glance-timer 1h 30m --label "Deep work"
glance-timer --until 14:30 --label "Standup"
glance-timer --pause | --resume
glance-timer --stop                       stop, or dismiss a finished timer
glance-timer --reset                      restart from the full duration
glance-timer --add 5m
glance-timer --show | --hide
glance-timer --peek | --window

Durations need a unit, so glance-timer 25 is an error. Errors exit 1, success prints nothing.

Peek

Peek shrinks a running timer into a small corner display that stays above every window and never takes keyboard focus. Use the Peek button while a timer runs, or glance-timer --peek. Click it, or run glance-timer --window, to get the window back.

Peek needs layer shell: niri, Sway, Hyprland, KDE Plasma, COSMIC and most wlroots compositors. The mode is remembered.

GNOME and X11 have no layer shell, so there Glance stays a normal window. Use the window's own Always on Top instead (Alt+Space on GNOME).

Settings

There is no preferences screen. Pick the alarm in the window; the rest is gsettings:

gsettings set io.github.mariocesar.Glance alarm-volume 0.5          # 0 to 1, default 0.8
gsettings set io.github.mariocesar.Glance peek-corner bottom-left   # top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right
gsettings set io.github.mariocesar.Glance alarm bell                # soft-chime, bell, digital, pulse, classic, none
gsettings set io.github.mariocesar.Glance presentation-mode window  # window, peek

niri

niri opens Glance floating. To put it in the top-right corner:

window-rule {
    match app-id=r#"^io\.github\.mariocesar\.Glance$"#
    open-floating true
    default-floating-position x=16 y=16 relative-to="top-right"
}

Some key bindings:

binds {
    Mod+T { spawn "glance-timer"; }
    Mod+Alt+T { spawn "glance-timer" "25m"; }
    Mod+Alt+Space { spawn-sh "glance-timer --pause || glance-timer --resume"; }
    Mod+Alt+BackSpace { spawn "glance-timer" "--stop"; }
}

Glance never steals focus. A visible timer that finishes turns amber and rings where it is; only a hidden window comes back. No desktop notifications, on purpose.

Privacy

Works offline. No network, analytics, telemetry or accounts. It only stores the four settings above.

Development

meson setup build
just run           # build and run from the build dir
just test
just screenshots   # retake the screenshots above, on niri
just install       # install into ~/.local

The alarm sounds are original, made by data/sounds/generate.py.

License

MIT