
Cuppa is a small application for Mac OS X to time your cup of tea as it
steeps. Tired of leaving your tea too long, to become bitter and cold, or
drinking it too soon and not appreciating its full potential? Then this
utility is for you!
Features
- All functionality is available from the Dock menu.
- Dock icon can display a small countdown timer as the beverage steeps.
- Customize the beverage list and steeping times.
- Quick Timer feature turns Cuppa into a versatile freeform timer.
- Customize the brew complete notification, including support for Growl.
- Also great for timing French press coffee and 2-minute noodles!
- Full Cocoa source code available.
- Runs on OS X 10.4-10.9.
Timing Your Brew
Use it from the Dock: just right-click or control-click on Cuppa's icon
and select the beverage you are brewing. Or select a beverage from the
Beverages menu. Cuppa will begin timing the brew, and you'll see a teabag
appear in the cup and gradually darken as the tea steeps. When the tea is done
Cuppa will attempt to get your attention by various configurable means. You can
also enable a countdown timer that's displayed in a small badge on the Dock icon.
Configuring Cuppa
Tea is a personal thing, but Cuppa can be customized to your heart's content.
To do so, select Preferences... from the menu.
Beverage List: The Beverage List tab allows you to change any
existing tea by double-clicking on its name or steep time and simply typing in a
new value. You can also remove beverages entirely, or add new ones, by clicking
the buttons underneath the beverage listing.
Clicking the Options tab will open a page of additional configuration
settings:
- Bounce Dock icon: When brewing is complete, bounce the Dock icon
repeatedly until you click it. This is annoying enough to get your attention.
- Play sound: If you prefer an audio notification, Cuppa will make a
clinking-spoon sound when the timer hits zero. You'll also hear quiet beeps
for the last few seconds of steep time.
- Show "Brewing Complete" alert box: Show an alert box on the screen
when your beverage is done. This alert box will also allow you to quit Cuppa
with a single click (or keystroke) when your tea is done.
- Notify via OS X Notification Center: On OS X 10.8 or later, use the
built-in Notification Center to show "Brewing Complete" messages. If you find
you're missing notifications because they disappear too quickly, try setting
the Cuppa alert style to "Alerts" in Notifications System Preferences.
- Notify via Growl: Growl is a notification system for OS X with a
pretty slick, highly configurable interface. You decide how obtrusive the
notifications should be, and their appearance. This preference option will only
be available if you have Growl installed on your system. For more information,
or to download Growl, visit the Growl project on the web at
http://www.growl.info.
- Show countdown timer on Dock icon: When this option is enabled, Cuppa
will show a tiny countdown timer as part of its Dock icon. Try not to strain
your eyes looking at it!
- Include steep times in menus: Check this box if you want Cuppa to
include times in the beverage menu items, so that before the timer even starts,
you know how long you'll have to wait.
- Check for program updates automatically: If this is enabled, Cuppa
will periodically contact a web service and inform you when a new version of
the program is available to download.
Cuppa Quick Timer
What if you need to brew a cup of tea in a hurry, and don't have time to
add a new beverage in Preferences? No worries; Cuppa's Quick Timer feature is a
simple way to start a timer in a jiffy. Just select Quick Timer... from
the menu and type either a number of seconds (e.g. "30"), minutes and seconds
(e.g. "2:45"), or any time up to the maximum 10 hours. Cuppa does the rest, and
notifies you when time is up.
Miscellaneous
To cancel the timer while it is running, select Cancel from the menu.
Customizing Sounds
You may find it amusing if your computer announces, "Tea -- Earl Grey -- Hot"
when your morning tea is ready to drink. Although there is no mechanism within
Cuppa's Preferences for changing the alert sounds, it's actually quite easy to
accomplish this. You'll need a couple of AIFF format sound files to copy into
the Cuppa application bundle. These will replace the default sounds for
beginning and completing brewing. Name them pour.aiff and
spoon.aiff, respectively.
Then, replace the default sound files as follows:
- Quit Cuppa if it is running.
- Find the Cuppa application in your Applications folder and right-click
(control-click) it.
- Click Show Package Contents.
- Navigate to Contents and then to Resources.
- Make backup copies of the pour.aiff and spoon.aiff sound
files, just in case something horrible happens.
- Copy your pour.aiff and spoon.aiff sound files into the
Resources folder.
- That's it! Now you can run Cuppa and test your modifications.
Credits and Copyright
Cuppa is an free, open-source application.
Copyright © 2005-2013 Nathan Cosgray, with contributions from Mathias Meyer and Eric McMurry.
German translation by Benedikt Hopmann. Czech translation by Tomáš Klos.
This application was inspired by The Tea Cooker for Linux and is based on work
done by Wunderbear Software.
Visit the Cuppa home page at http://www.nathanatos.com/software/.
Also available: iCuppa for iPhone and iPod touch... you'll find it in the iTunes App Store!