Fuse

A menubar-only timer for macOS that burns a glowing fuse along the edge of your screen.

When a timer runs, Fuse draws a line across a full screen edge — over fullscreen apps and every Space — that shrinks as time burns down, with a glowing tip at the receding end. One glance tells you how much is left without ever leaving what you're doing.

Features

• Menubar-only — no Dock icon, no window. Lives entirely in a status-bar menu (LSUIElement).
• Burning-fuse overlay — a line spanning a full screen edge, visible over all apps, fullscreen windows, and Spaces, shrinking toward a glowing tip as the timer counts down. Configurable color, thickness, edge, and target display.
• Presets — one ordered, reorderable list of time expressions you mix freely: fixed durations (5m, 1h30m, 90, 45s) and minute-of-hour marks (:15, :30, :45, :00). The list order sets the menu order.
• Custom timer panel — type a time expression (and an optional name) for anything the presets don't cover.
• Single timer — exactly one timer runs at a time; starting a new one silently replaces the running one.
• Auto-repeat — a duration timer can re-ignite for the same length when it expires, for a fixed number of rounds (25m ×4). Each round still fires its own completion notification. Set it with an xN suffix on a preset expression (25m x4), the Repeat row in the custom panel, or AppleScript's repeating argument. Deadline (:MM / HH:MM) timers don't repeat.
• Round counter — while a repeat is running, the menu and the hover tooltip show the current round (#2/4).
• End time (ETA) — the hover tooltip can show when the timer ends as a wall-clock time (ends 14:35), plus the projected finish of the whole repeat relay (all done ~16:10). Toggle in General › Behavior. (on by default)
• Repeat last / last finished — when no timer is running, the menu offers a one-click ↻ Again to restart the last timer, and can optionally show a recap of the last finished timer (Last: tea · ended 14:32). The recap is toggled in General › Behavior (off by default).
• Final-stretch flare — near the end, the fuse shifts toward a warning color and grows its flame. Toggle in the Fuse › Appearance tab (on by default), with a color well to pick the warning color and a "Flare size" slider for how much the flame grows. Visual only — the end time never changes.
• Completion notification — delivered via the system notification center, with a configurable body and an optional sound.
• Progress milestones — optionally get a silent banner partway through (e.g. Halfway · 2:30 left). Pick a preset set in Notifications — halfway, quarters, thirds, fifths, or a final stretch. Off by default and independent of the completion notification.
• Remaining time in the menu bar — optionally show the live countdown next to the icon.
• Caffeinate-style power options — prevent system idle sleep while a timer runs, and optionally keep the Mac awake even with the lid closed (through a small helper installed once with an administrator password).
• AppleScript and Alfred — start and stop timers from scripts or from an Alfred keyword.

Install

From a release (DMG)

1. Download the latest Fuse-x.y.z.dmg from GitHub Releases.
2. Open it and drag Fuse.app into Applications.

The app is ad-hoc signed and not notarized, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. To open it, either:

• Right-click Fuse.app → Open, then confirm in the dialog, or

• Clear the quarantine attribute from a terminal:

  xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Fuse.app

From source

Requires macOS 13+ and a Swift toolchain (Xcode command-line tools).

make install

This builds the app, bundles it, and installs it to /Applications/Fuse.app.

Usage

Click the menubar icon to open the menu. It lists your presets in order. Each preset is a time expression:

• A duration expression starts a timer for a fixed length and shows as 25 min, 1 h 30 min, 45 sec, etc.
• A minute-of-hour mark (:MM) targets the next time the clock reaches that minute, and shows the computed target time — e.g. at 14:50, :15 ends at 15:15, :30 at 15:30, :45 at 15:45, and :00 (top of the hour) at 15:00. Exactly on a mark, the next occurrence is used (at 15:15 sharp, :15 ends at 16:15).

Use Custom Timer… for anything not in your preset list. The panel accepts the same time expressions plus an optional name, and a Repeat row that auto-repeats a duration for a chosen number of rounds:

Expression	Meaning
5m	5 minutes
1h30m	1 hour 30 minutes (compound (\d+h)?(\d+m)?(\d+s)?)
90	a bare number means minutes → 90 minutes
45s	45 seconds
:15	minute-of-hour mark → the next time the clock minute hits 15 (:00 = top of the hour)
10:00	the next occurrence of that 24-hour wall-clock time (today if still in the future, else tomorrow)
23:30	next occurrence of 23:30
25m x4	a trailing xN (≥ 2) auto-repeats a duration for N rounds (here, four 25-minute rounds); not valid on a :MM/HH:MM deadline

A leading-colon :MM (no hour digits, MM 00–59) is a minute-of-hour mark; with hour digits before the colon it's an absolute HH:MM clock time. Invalid input (empty, garbage, a zero or negative total, a mark with MM > 59, or a clock time with minutes > 59 / hours > 23) is rejected with an inline message.

Single-timer semantics: Fuse runs one timer at a time. Starting a new timer — from a preset, the custom panel, AppleScript, or Alfred — silently replaces whatever was running.

AppleScript

Fuse exposes three commands.

Start a timer (the optional named argument sets the timer name; the optional repeating argument auto-repeats a duration for that many rounds — 2 or more, ignored on a clock-time expression):

osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to start timer "5m" named "tea"'
osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to start timer "10:00"'
osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to start timer "25m" named "focus" repeating 4'

Stop the running timer:

osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to stop timer'

Restart the most recently started timer (as a single shot, re-resolving a deadline to its next occurrence):

osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to repeat last timer'

The expression grammar is identical to the custom panel. On bad input the command sets an AppleScript error with the same human-readable reason shown in the panel.

Fuse also exposes read-only properties on the application for querying presets and the current timer state:

Property	Type	Meaning
presets	list of text	The stored preset expressions, in order.
running	boolean	true while a timer is active.
remaining	integer	Whole seconds left on the running timer (0 if none).
timer name	text	The running timer's name ("" if none or unnamed).
ends	text	The running timer's end time as HH:mm ("" if none).
round	integer	The running timer's current round, 1-based (0 if none).
last ended at	text	The last finished timer's end time as HH:mm ("" if nothing has finished).
last started	text	The most recently started timer's time expression, e.g. 5m or 25m x4 ("" if none).
last started name	text	The most recently started timer's name ("" if none or unnamed).

osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to get presets'
osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to get running'
osascript -e 'tell application "Fuse" to get remaining'

Alfred workflow

The workflow source lives in alfred/. It drives Fuse through the same AppleScript commands, so the menubar app must be installed (the workflow auto-launches it).

The workflow is versioned and released independently of the app, under workflow-v* tags (the app uses v*). To install, grab Fuse-Workflow-<version>.alfredworkflow from a workflow release and open it with Alfred, or build it yourself with make alfred. Its version lives in alfred/VERSION; scripts/build_alfred_plist.py regenerates alfred/info.plist from that plus source, and alfred/CHANGELOG.md tracks its history.

Default keyword: fuse (configurable in the workflow's user settings).

fuse 5m tea          # start a 5-minute "tea" timer
fuse 10:00 standup   # start a timer until the next 10:00, named "standup"
fuse :15 sync        # start a timer until the next :15 minute mark, named "sync"
fuse stop            # stop the running timer (or "cancel")

An empty query lists your configured presets in order (read from the running app, or from stored settings when it's idle) as the default items — durations preview as "Start 5 min timer" / "ends at HH:MM" and minute-of-hour marks as "Next :15 timer" / "ends at HH:MM". When a timer is running, a Stop item (with the timer's name and remaining time) is shown at the top. Each result previews how Fuse will parse the expression before you press Enter.

Settings

Settings open from the menu and are grouped into four tabs. Everything persists in UserDefaults.

General

• Presets — one editable, reorderable list of time expressions (default 1m/3m/5m/10m/15m/20m/30m/45m/60m/90m/120m/25m x4/:15/:30/:45/:00). Durations and minute-of-hour marks live in the same list; add with a text field that validates the expression (appended to the end, invalid input is rejected inline), remove per row, and reorder by dragging a row or using its up/down buttons. The list is deduplicated but not sorted — its order sets the menu order. There is no duration/deadline mode switch.
• Show remaining time in the menu bar (default on).
• Behavior: show the end time (ETA) in the fuse hover tooltip (default on), and show the last finished timer at the top of the idle menu (default off).

Fuse

• Enable overlay (master toggle, default on).
• Fuse color (default pure red).
• Thickness, 1–20 pt (default 4).
• Texture: Solid, Rope (a braided twist, default), or Wick (a wrapped cord). Drawn within the configured thickness.
• Burning tip: Glow (the classic dot), Flame (a licking flame, default), or Sparks (a flame with trailing embers). Flame and Sparks flicker and bulge a little past the line into the screen so the fire is visible without widening the line itself.
• Tip size: a 0.5×–3× slider (default 1×) that scales the burning tip (and the room it has to bulge into the screen).
• Position: top, bottom, left, or right edge (default top).
• Notch (top position only, default Draw over the notch): on a notched MacBook, choose Draw below the notch to drop the line just under the notch, or Skip the notch to keep it at the top edge but jump it across the camera housing so the middle isn't covered.
• Flare near the end (default on): the fuse shifts toward a warning color in the final seconds, without changing the end time. Pick the warning color with the adjacent color well (orange by default), and set the "Flare size" slider (1×–3×, default 2×) for how much the flame grows toward the end.
• Display: main display, all displays, or a specific screen (default main display).
• Reset to Defaults restores color, thickness, texture, burning tip, and position to their defaults (presets, display, notifications, and power options are left alone).

While the Fuse tab is open, a live overlay preview is drawn on screen so color, thickness, texture, burning tip, position, and display changes are visible immediately (the flame/sparks even animate), even with no timer running. A real running timer always takes over.

Notifications

• Enable notifications (default on).
• Notification body template (default Time's up!).
• Play sound (default on).
• Progress milestones — a silent banner partway through, from a preset set (Off, Halfway 50%, Thirds 33/66%, Quarters 25/50/75%, Fifths 20/40/60/80%, or Final stretch 75/90%). Off by default; repeats re-announce each round.

Power

• Prevent system idle sleep while a timer runs (default on).
• Keep Mac awake with the lid closed (default off; see below).

Permissions

Notifications. Completion notifications need notification permission. If it hasn't been granted, the menu surfaces a Notifications disabled — click to fix item that requests authorization, or — once denied — deep-links System Settings straight to Fuse's own row in the Notifications pane (via the per-app …Notifications-Settings.extension?id=<bundle id> URL) so Allow Notifications is one click away.

Keep awake with lid closed. macOS lets only Apple-signed processes hold a power assertion that applies to a closed lid, and the kernel's clamshell bit that any app can set is rewritten by powerd whenever it re-evaluates lid-close state, for example when the charger is plugged in with the lid shut. So this option works through a small root helper, FuseLidGuard, which turns system sleep off with pmset -a disablesleep 1 while a timer runs. Install it once from Settings › Power, or from the menu's Lid helper not installed item; it asks for an administrator password and installs a LaunchDaemon (/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.unsafe9.fuse.lidguard.plist, with its binary in /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/). The daemon lives outside Fuse.app, so moving or deleting the app does not strand it.

pmset disablesleep is stored on disk and survives reboots, so Fuse never flips it directly. While a timer runs, Fuse holds a power assertion named Fuse lid-closed keep-awake with a two-minute timeout that it renews every 30 seconds, and the daemon keeps sleep off exactly while that assertion exists. Fuse tells the daemon right away when it takes or drops the assertion, and the daemon also checks every 15 seconds. powerd releases the assertion the moment Fuse quits, crashes, or is force-killed, and it expires if Fuse hangs, so sleep comes back at once on a normal stop, within 15 seconds after a crash, and within about two and a quarter minutes after a hang. The daemon also turns sleep back on when launchd stops it, and on its next start after a crash or reboot. It only turns sleep back on when it was the one that turned it off, so a pmset disablesleep you set yourself is left alone. If the lid is already closed when the timer ends, the daemon has the kernel re-apply its lid-close policy, so the Mac sleeps as usual unless an external display on AC keeps it in clamshell mode.

While such a timer runs, all system sleep is off, including Apple menu › Sleep, not only lid-close sleep.

If system sleep is ever left off on Fuse's behalf with no timer running, for example because the helper was deleted by hand, the menu shows System sleep left off — click to restore; sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0 does the same from a terminal. Remove the helper with Uninstall… in Settings › Power or sudo /Applications/Fuse.app/Contents/MacOS/FuseLidGuard uninstall. If Fuse.app is already gone, run sudo launchctl bootout system/com.unsafe9.fuse.lidguard and delete the two files above.

Development

The build is driven by make and Swift Package Manager.

Target	Does
make build	Compile with swift build -c release.
make bundle	Assemble build/Fuse.app (Info.plist, icon, sdef, lid helper, ad-hoc codesign).
make dmg	Build a compressed DMG with an /Applications symlink.
make install	Bundle and install to /Applications/Fuse.app.
make run	Bundle and launch the app.
make clean	Remove .build/ and build/.

Pass ARCHS=universal to build a fat binary for arm64 + x86_64 (used by the release pipeline).

Releasing

Releases are tag-driven. The version-bump skill takes a patch / minor / major (or explicit X.Y.Z) argument and:

1. Commits any remaining changes.
2. Rolls CHANGELOG.md (renames ## [Unreleased] to the new version + date) and bumps the VERSION file in one chore(release) commit.
3. Creates an annotated vX.Y.Z tag and pushes it.

Pushing the tag triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which verifies the tag matches VERSION, builds a universal DMG (make dmg ARCHS=universal), extracts that version's changelog section as the release notes, and publishes a GitHub Release with the DMG attached.