Cuckoo

Clock chimes for your Mac.

Cathedral bells, grandfather clocks, digital watches: they all remind us of the passing of time by striking a bell or a chime. If you’re prone to becoming engrossed in your work (or play), a timely clock toll can help bring you back to Earth now and again.

Cuckoo brings hourly clock chimes to Mac OS X. Play a beep on the hour. Or on the half-hour, or any combination of five-minute intervals. Use one of Cuckoo’s built-in tones or any of your Mac’s installed sounds. (Coo!)

A preview.

Fig. 1.   Screenshot of Cuckoo. Also check out the features dissection.

Cuckoo for you.

Download Cuckoo by clicking the icon below, and then follow the installation instructions. (Requires Mac OS X version 10.4 or later.)


   download Cuckoo 1.2.5 (zip archive)

Version 1.2.5 released 23-Apr-2009.

New in this version:

  • Support .caf (Core Audio Format) chime sounds.
  • Fixed a bug causing the CuckooChimeAgent to crash when checking for updates in certain situations (while the network is unavailable or if the cookies database is corrupt).

Cuckoo-vous?

Cuckoo is now localized software; it has been translated into the following languages:

  • English
  • Français (thanks: Yann Ricquebourg)

Registration.

Cuckoo’s basic functionality—playing a chime on the hour—may be used for free. For a registration fee of US$6 you’ll have access to these additional features:

  • Use any sound file installed on your Mac as your chime. (Place your custom sounds, in wav or aiff or mp3 format, in /Library/Sounds or /Users/yourlogin/Library/Sounds so Cuckoo can find them.)
  • Chime at any five-minute mark (not just on the hour).
  • Toll the number of the hour, on the hour (instead of chiming just once).

Your registration will be valid for any future 1.x upgrades of Cuckoo, too.

Purchase a Cuckoo license now
using a credit card or your PayPal account. (Cheep!)

Installation.

Double-click the Cuckoo-(version).zip archive (downloaded from the link above). The file Cuckoo.prefPane should appear; double-click that to launch System Preferences and install the Cuckoo preference panel. The background chime agent will run whenever the “Enable Cuckoo” box is checked.

[To uninstall, first un-check the “Enable Cuckoo” box in the Cuckoo preference pane. Next, return to the main System Preferences view and right-click (or hold Control and click) the Cuckoo icon to reveal a pop-up menu; select the item labeled “Remove ‘Cuckoo’ preference pane”.]

Support.

Cuckoo is brought to you by toastycode. Questions and bug reports can be sent to support.

Show your support for Cuckoo at iusethis.com! Cuckoo is also listed at Apple, MacUpdate, and VersionTracker.