Scheduling your computer to do something every day, every time you log in, or whenever the screen wakes up isn’t impossible on most computers, it’s just not convenient. Task Scheduler on Windows and Automator for macOS work if you’re willing to dig in, but there’s a learning curve.
Task Till Dawn (which I found via App Addict) is a free Windows and macOS application made by developer Oliver Matuschin that you can use to set up custom automations for everything from starting a backup to changing your desktop wallpaper.
To get started, download the application and launch it. You can start creating automations right away. There are four main sections to the automation builder. Metadata allows you to provide a name and description for your automation; Actions defines what the automation does.
Credit: Justin Pot
Setting up an automation mostly lives in the Actions tab. The left two panels show you the various things your automation can do, and the right panel shows you the steps you’ve currently set up.
The next two tabs, Schedule and Events, allow you to pick when the automation will run. Schedule is fairly self-explanatory: You can choose to launch your automation based on time. This can mean a frequency—for example, every two hours—or an exact time—for example, 10 a.m. every day.
Credit: Justin Pot
But you can also trigger automations based on Events, which to me is more interesting. This lets you do things like launch an automation when specific things happen, like your computer waking up or a new hard drive being connected.
Credit: Justin Pot
The fun here is experimenting and seeing what you can build. I, for example, wanted a Time Machine backup to run on my Mac every time I plugged in my backup drive (named “88MPH”). I set up an automation using the event “When volumes are inserted or drives are connected.” I then set up the automation to retrieve the names of connected drives and only proceed if one matches the name of my drive. If a drive does match, the Time Machine backup begins.
There’s plenty more you can do here. The installation folder comes with a few pre-built workflows for doing things like automatically grabbing photos from a camera and announcing the time out loud every hour. Exploring these is a great way to get a feel for what’s possible. The real fun, though, is trying to build something yourself.