You might wonder why an IM site is talking about laptop chimes, well during an incident time is exceptionally precious and so you must not the passing of hours so you don’t miss deadlines etc. Additionally, we want to record what we did each part of the day, so taking note every hour is a great way to summarise the day quickly and easily.
In this post I will show you how to add hourly chimes to your Windows 10 system, mobiles or your Mac OSX laptop.
Mac OSX
Starting with the Mac OSX 12 and later you need to open your System Preferences and go to the Dock & Menu Bar applet. In there scroll on the left to the Menu Bar Only section. Click there and the Clock options should appear like the image below. Finally, check the Announce the time box and select the hourly cadence.
For Fun I also customise the voice choosing Zarvox and slowing the speed down max; that gets me a voice similar to the Cylon’s from Battlestar Galactica.
For OSX up to 12 you still go to System Preferences but you select Date & Time then the Clock tab where you will see the same options.
Mobiles
For mobiles, you can simple add a recurring countdown timer. When the timer alerts, you can hit the repeat button and it restarts another hour countdown.
The screenshot is from an iPhone, but Android has the same functionality.
Windows Settings
For Microsoft Windows it’s different as there is no built in functionality we can leverage.
That said, in the Microsoft Software Store you can get a free Hourly Reminder app that will do the same thing; simply download and configure.
