Cuppa is a small application for Mac OS X that times 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 (includes support for Growl).
• Also great for timing French press coffee and 2-minute noodles!
• Full Cocoa source code available.
• Runs on OS X 10.3-10.4 (PowerPC or Intel).

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 the dock icon.

Configuring Cuppa

• Bounce Dock Icon: When brewing is complete, bounce the dock item repeatedly until you click it.
• Play Sound: If you prefer an audio notification, Cuppa will make a clinking-spoon sound when the timer hits zero.
• Show "Brewing Complete" Alert Box: Show an alert box on the screen when your beverage is done.
• Notify via Growl: Growl is a notification system for OS X with a pretty slick interface. This preference option will only be available if you have Growl installed on your system. For more information, 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.
• Beverage List: Change any existing tea by double-clicking on the name or the time and just typing in a new value. You can also remove beverages entirely, or add new ones.
• Restore Defaults: Clicking this button will remove all of your personal beverages and replace them with some of my own favorite teas.

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.

Miscelleneous

To cancel the timer, 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:

1. Quit Cuppa if it is running.
2. Find the Cuppa application in your Applications folder and right-click (control-click) it.
3. Click Show Package Contents.
4. Navigate to Contents and then to Resources.
5. Make backup copies of the pour.aiff and spoon.aiff sound files, just in case something horrible happens.
6. Copy your pour.aiff and spoon.aiff sound files into the Resources folder.
7. That's it! Now you can run Cuppa and test your modifications.

Credits and Copyright

Cuppa is an free, open-source application.
Copyright © 2006 Nathan Cosgray. With contributions from Mathias Meyer.
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/.