arttime is a CLI application that blends beauty of ASCII / text art with functionality of clock / timer / pattern-based time manager in terminal ⏰
Beauty of text-art meets functionality of a feature-rich clock / timer / pattern-based time manager in terminal. In addition to its functional/productivity features, arttime
brings curated text-art to otherwise artless terminal emulators of starving developers and other users who can use terminal. It is a cross-platform application with native notifications/sounds that runs well on macOS, Linux, BSD Unixes, and Windows WSL.
Artime is rooted in Unix philosophy. You can also feed keystrokes into it from a file, pipe, string or unrelated process instead of just typing them; control gets cleanly transferred to your keyboard when the respective file, pipe, or string ends. Among other features, this allows using arttime to display dynamic information like system metrics, weather, stock market feed, and etc using a simple external feeder program.
1h 30m
from now) or absoulte time (like Dec 22 2:45PM EST
).p
). Note: for now even absolute goals like 1PM
get delayed, in future users will be able to override that.i
to see all timers), 3) time passed since last timer expired.Ctrl-z
) and continuation (fg
). Doesn't occupy terminal screen or consume power while suspended, but still shows correct elapsed time when continued.artprint
is also available in the same directory as arttime
.r
) arttime's timers before putting computer to sleep or moving away from screen. Be greeted by a beautiful text art, and know how much time you spent away from computer when you get back to computer again. And no, it doesn't consume power when computer is sleeping.k
from within arttime to see many pre-installed examples, and read more details in arttime's manual $ arttime -m
and arttime wiki: feed keys from anywhere. Among other features, this allows using arttime to display dynamic information like system metrics, weather, stock market feed, and etc using a simple external feeder program.k
, type timer
and press Tab
.Up
/Down
arrows on the prompt to scroll history. More keybindings listed in arttime wiki: Modes and keybindings
k
, type story
(or learn
) and press Tab
.Note: arttime is tuned to consume less power and memory. It uses only about ~0.1% of CPU time while running, and only around 6MB of RAM in steady state on my machine.
Much good ascii art was created during web 1.0, but the artform declined after that. arttime intends to be a platform/repository for hosting/displaying ascii/ansi art, as ascii/ansi does have its natural home on a terminal (instead of a wall of an arts museum). In doing so it also encourages sharing art, a not so common drift with the arrival of NFTs (where monkey stickers are being priced at hundreds of thousands of US dollars). The repository already provides a curated library of good ascii art (mixed at times with computer-generated text version of digital images). If you are a text artist, or find a treasure trove of libre ascii/text art, please feel free to leave a link to the work in arttime discussions.
D.H.
in this repository, example: gravity (D.H. 1992), concentricfield (D.H. 1991), globe (D.H. 1991).Default start page. $ arttime
Default art. $ arttime
then press h
, or arttime --nolearn
Animated art clock: $ arttime --nolearn -a military -b military2 -t "Say no to wars, yes to peace" --ac 4
. Note: animation works only if a-art and b-art file height is same, which it is for many related arts.
Another animated art clock. $ arttime --nolearn -a kissingcats -b kissingcats2 -t "Since we found love within, we don't bother rats - Wise cats" --ac 3
. Note: transparency is an artifact of one's terminal emulator application.
Timer and notification. arttime --nolearn -a colorowl2 -b colorowl3 -t "We don't sleep at night - Owls"
then press g
to enter a goal time like 10s
for 10 seconds, 1h 6s
for 1 hour 6 seconds. Check more formats supported by reading help documentation $ arttime -h
, or even better by passing 'help' as goal time while arttime is running (press g
, enter help
). This is an example of multi-colored art too.
Multiple timers, repeating time management program like Pomodoro Technique. a) From the commandline, run: arttime --nolearn -a magic -b magic2 -g "25m;30m;55m;1h;1h25m;1h30m;1h55m;2h25m;loop2"
or b) From within application, run: arttime --nolearn -a magic -b magic2
, then press g
and enter 25m;30m;55m;1h;1h25m;1h30m;1h55m;2h25m;loop2
. Change loop2
to loop4
or sprint4
for approximately 10 hour work day. Progressbar shows that we are 20% done with our program.
Expressive timers: The following GIF shows some preinstalled expressive timers. Insipired from pomodoro (tomato) technique, some of them are named after other fruits. It's very simple to create your own expressive timer or time management program. Start arttime, press k
, type t
followed by Tab
to see all the preinstalled timers.
A 24-bit color art example $ arttime --nolearn -a obama2 -t "Yes we can, yes we can drink better teas"
. Note: terminal emulator must support 24-bit RGB colors.
Random art selection. $ arttime --nolearn
then press and hold j
for a few seconds. After some time arttime will settle on some randomly selected art. Press y
to select it, or c
to cancel. Click on mp4 video below to play it (Note: following video playback works in Safari on macOS, but for some reason not in Safari on iPhone 8, perhaps because of a github.com bug?).
$ arttime -h
, and start in learn mode (default) to understand keybindings $ arttime
.There are three installation methods: 1) Simple, 2) Manual, 3) Package manager. As the name suggests, 1) Simple method should be used by users who want a simple install experience (also no password required), 2) Manual method is for users who are fluent in using terminal and want the most customize install experience (check any optional dependencies at arttime dependencies), 3) Package manager method automates dependency installation, though mostly requires admin password to install.
zsh -c '{url="https://gist.githubusercontent.com/poetaman/bdc598ee607e9767fe33da50e993c650/raw/d0146d258a30daacb9aee51deca9410d106e4237/arttime_online_installer.sh"; zsh -c "$(curl -fsSL $url || wget -qO- $url)"}'
Enter
arttime
and press Enter
, arttime will launch!Note: The simple install method installs arttime under ~/.local
, which is a standard install directory for local installation.
cd
to that directory./install.sh -h
to see the options for installation./install.sh
with your options of choiceFor Debian, Ubuntu, etc Linuxes that use apt
, please download and install latest .deb package: arttime_2.3.0-1_all.deb. Instructions:
$ mv arttime_2.3.0-1_all.deb /tmp
$ sudo apt install /tmp/arttime_2.3.0-1_all.deb
If you don't see your favorite distribution and would like to volunteer then get in touch. Useful links: arttime dependencies, arttime discussions, @ehaupt's FreeBSD PR/FreeBSD port/FreeBSD art. Once you have added a package, open a pull request with some representative art like FreeBSD mascot to get representation for your favorite distribution/OS (mascots are preferred over logos).
Docker™ being a containerized environment can be a preferred way of trying applications for some geeks. With docker already installed you can give arttime a quick try in a docker container, though without arttime's sounds/notifications. Copy-Paste-Enter the following command in a terminal application after starting Docker Desktop on your computer. Note: arttime, its committers or artists don't endorse docker™ in any form or manner. It's presented here only for geeks who know what they are doing and prefer to try it in a container before installing; for everybody else its recommended to jump directly to Installation.
Note to docker geeks: arttime will start in UTC timezone unless you have environment variable TZ set to a preferred timezone before running the following command. For a normal installation (not docker), arttime automatically starts in users timezone. There is no clean and portable docker interface to inherit host timezone. You can change the timezone from within arttime, after it launches, by pressing z
and following the instructions (e.g.: California time can be set by entering US/Pacific
[tab based auto-completion hints are provided] after pressing z
).
docker run -e TERM -e LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 -e TZ -it --rm zshusers/zsh:5.8 zsh -c '
export SHELL=$(command -v zsh)
apt update
apt install -y curl less
curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/poetaman/bdc598ee607e9767fe33da50e993c650/raw/d0146d258a30daacb9aee51deca9410d106e4237/arttime_online_installer.sh | TERM=xterm-256color zsh
TERM=xterm-256color ~/.local/bin/arttime
echo "For more information, please check https://github.com/poetaman/arttime"'
LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
. Unfortunately the same string might not work as there is no standard naming convention (it could be named en_US.UTF-8
instead of C.UTF-8
among other possibilities). Web search is the only way to figure the exact name of UTF-8 locale.ogg123
to play sounds. In future more sound servers can be natively supported, but it is always recommended to have vorbis-tool installed as a fallback mechanism for playing sounds./etc/localtime
on your system is not a symbolic (soft) link, and hence arttime needs to spend some time finding the long form of your current timezone. Workaround: sudo rm /etc/localtime && ln -s /usr/share/<Area>/<Location> /etc/localtime
. Here <Area>/<Location>
should be the appropriate timezone. Check Names_of_time_zones. arttime prints a warning upon launch if this /etc/localtime
is not a symbolic link.