- Category
- Health & Fitness
- Rank
- No. 2192Tools index
Previous survey · No. 2178 ·
- Pricing
- Open Source
- Type
- APP
- Builder
- badlogic
- GitHub
- 7 stars
- Date
About
Minimal macOS reminder to walk every 45 minutes.
What it does
Walker runs a tiny Bash process in the background and prompts you to move once per hour. Each cycle posts a macOS notification, plays the Glass sound, and speaks a short reminder. Command-line actions start the process, stop it, or report whether it is running.
Why it's ranked here
Its appeal comes from extreme simplicity: one executable script, three commands, and no package manager or service configuration. The implementation is easy to inspect and modify. That clarity comes with a narrow feature set and a notable documentation mismatch: one comment says 45 minutes, while the configured interval and README say 60.
What's good
The script gives visible, audible, and spoken prompts without requiring a graphical application. It prevents duplicate running instances by checking the recorded process ID. Stop and status actions also distinguish a live process from a stale record. Installation only requires making the script executable and copying it into a command directory.
Tradeoffs
Walker depends on macOS notification and speech commands, so it is not portable beyond that platform without changes. The interval, message, title, sound, and speech are fixed in source. It notifies immediately after starting, then waits an hour. There is no preferences interface, pause action, login startup setup, schedule, or test suite shown.
How to use it well
It suits macOS users who want a transparent movement prompt and are comfortable launching a terminal command. Start it during a work session, use status when uncertain, and stop it when reminders are unwanted. Edit the short script if you need another interval. Choose something else for configurable schedules, cross-platform support, activity tracking, or managed startup.
Technical notes+
The repository text shows two files: README.md and walker. walker is a Bash script with INTERVAL_MINS set to 60 and PIDFILE set to $HOME/.walker.pid. notify() invokes osascript for a notification with the Glass sound, while run_daemon() also invokes say before sleeping for INTERVAL_MINS multiplied by 60. The case statement exposes start, stop, and status actions, with start as the default. The background process redirects output, records $! in the PID file, and uses disown. README.md documents manual installation via chmod and copying walker to /usr/local/bin/.
Observed
- Primary language
- Bash shell script
- Platform support
- macOS, using osascript notifications and the say command
- Interface
- CLI with start, stop, and status actions
- Packaging and installation
- Single executable script installed manually into /usr/local/bin/
- Runtime dependencies
- Bash plus macOS osascript and say commands
- Repository structure
- The supplied repository text shows README.md and walker, with no test directory shown
- License
- No license is stated in the supplied repository text
Read from README.md, walker.
What it can do
Send walking reminders at regular intervals
45-minute time intervals → Notification alerts to walk
Track time between walking breaks
System clock and user activity → Time countdown until next reminder
Display minimal reminder interface
User interaction with macOS → Simple reminder window or notification
Tags
Tech Stack
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Editorially curated, with community endorsements as a secondary signal. Corrections welcome.