iTunes Alarm Clock
March 28th, 2007
You Mac has some pretty fancy features built into its hardware, including the ability to turn itself on when it’s sleeping or powered off. This capability leverages nicely into an iTunes alarm clock.
In the screencast we’ll use the System Preferences to turn the Mac on at a specified time. Then we’ll set an appointment in iCal that runs an AppleScript a few minutes later. The script will kick off a Playlist in iTunes loaded with songs we’d like to wake up to.
Murphy made a few different scripts for the job. You can pick one or combine pieces from all of them to make your own. Here’s what they do:
- Wakeup1.scpt Script simply plays a Playlist
- Wakeup2.scpt Script plays each track in a Playlist for a specified number of seconds. That should annoy you out of bed.
- Volume.scpt Script gradually increases the iTunes volume until you click stop in iTunes.
You can download the scripts and edit them for your own needs. Feel free to post improvements in the comments.
We’re halfway through iTunes week. We’ll look at more AppleScripts the rest of the week courtesy of Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. Don’t forget to check back! Or better yet, subscribe to Murphy’s feed.
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March 28th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Great little trick, but Aurora does all that and it is free. So in case people do not wish to tinker with applescripts, there is an alternative.
Also, is there a script that can serve like a “snooze” function?
March 28th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
You could definitely do a snooze. Have the script throw up a dialog that you click for snooze and that kicks off a delay. I’ll tinker with it if I get a second.
There are probably 3rd party things for a lot of the stuff I post, and I appreciate you pointing it out - I don’t always go looking.
I also think simple things like this are a good place for people to get their feet wet with AppleScript. I’m not a coder by ANY stretch, and it took me 90 minutes to scribble out the volume script last night, after starting over a couple times. But in the end I had a better idea of how AppleScript handles Repeats.
Thanks.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Well, Murphy, I am new to Mac and I must say that I am learning AppleScript by using your examples. Maybe you know a little more that you put on
Love the site. Keep up the great work.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:44 am
What an interesting mix of apps… never would have thought to use iCal this way.. very cool tip. (I’m new to macs)