Set snooze duration for Mountain Lion notifications

I bought this .. set up a test cal event & the snooze app came up, I set it for an hour .. once I hit the hour, the regular notification came up immediately again. I hit snooze & got another notification in 15 minutes .. same as before. Am I missing something or is this solution not working either??

OnDaRoad, you can turn off the system notification from System Preferences->Notifications->Calendar, as explained in the documentation included with SnoozeMaster. If you hit the system's notification snooze button, you're basically telling the system to remind you in 15 mins. SnoozeMaster cannot disable or replace the system's calendar notificaitons, you'll have to do that manually.

Notice you can leave the sound option on, that way you'll get the proper notification sound when an alert triggers.

I just purchased the SnoozeMaster app on the App Store and really like it - except for one thing.

I think it's a bad idea for apps to steal the focus from another program - like when SnoozeMaster pops up one of it's dialog boxes. In other words, I'm typing along in Pages editing a file, and up pops an event from SnoozeMaster and takes focus from Pages right in the middle of me typing my future best selling novel - I'm focused on writing the most clever sentence the English language has ever seen and SnoozeMaster ruins my train of thought by forcefully injecting itself into my train of thought - boo - hiss - boo - hiss!!! Isn't this contrary to the way other programs work? I mean, let me finish my train of thought before I change my attention to what I need to do regarding the event reminder that SnoozeMaster just popped up.

Please either change this or put a preference in so that poeple can select whether or not they want SnoozeMaster to behave this way or just pop up it's dialog box and leave the focus where it was.

Thanks for writing such a great little app - I hope you get very rich for doing something that Apple seriously goofed up when they released Mountain Lion and has caused a lot of people to become less happy than they were before. I think that after people get SnoozeMaster they will be happy once again - with regard to this one "improvement" you've made.

Thanks again...

-Bob

Thanks for the feedback Bob. We'll see what we can do. We would love to have that option, but the last time we tried, if we didn't activate the app when showing the popup, the buttons wouldn't respond. We'll consult with Apple and keep experimenting to try to find a workable solution.

The Notification dialog box that popped up before installing SnoozeMaster (the one with the "Close" or "Snooze" buttons) doesn't steal focus, so it would appear there is a way to do it. Perhaps you can find out what API routine it uses to bring up it's dialog box without forcibly taking focus and try that?

Perhaps you can query what program has the current focus before SnoozeMaster, pop up your SnoozeMaster dialog box, and then give the previous program back the focus, and let user give focus back to SnoozeMaster when they are ready to deal with it?

Anyway, really think this change would make the SnoozeMaster much easier to live with and use. Thanks for the feedback...

-Bob

These improvements would, of course be great. It's always irritating to have your fingers flying and finding the text has gone somewhere you didn't intend.

But I'd like to thank EINono and his team for taking up the challenge and doing something that Apple finds so hard to too - or even talk about. And particularly thank you for making it so cheap. Getting it was a no-brainer.

ElNono wrote:

SnoozeMaster is now avaiable from the Mac App Store, for MacOS X 10.8 and up.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snoozemaster/id614955483?mt=12

It addresses this exact issue. You'll be able to configure different pre-set snooze times, enter custom snooze times when an alarm triggers, etc. It's what snoozing should've been from the get go.

More information:

http://on-core.com/snoozemaster/

SnoozeMaster would have been a better alternative than a whole new calendar, but still both (BusyCal & SnoozeMaster) "fix" an issue with Calendar that I would think Apple could also have fixed. I rarely have issues with Apple software, particuarly OS upgrade/updates. But the change from iCal to Calender reminders really frustrated me since I used it MANY times daily to keep my life in order. I'm a full time volunteer and couldn't do all the "irons in the fire" without the reminders. But the Notifications every 15 minute thing was compromising what sanity I have left (joke)...but it was very frustrating to see an app evolve away from functionality (for me).

As I stated previously, the cost of the BusyCal (about the price of an OS upgrade) was nice. Only thing I have a question for those using it - Calendar continues to put its reminders up. Should those be turned off or will that disable the iCloud syncing with my other devices. I know BusyCal uses the iCloud sync, but which app is in control - can one (Calender) be "silenced" without losing the sync?

Tom

Tom,

System Preferences --> Notifications:

Calendar and Reminders: Uncheck all options to notify and set alert style to "None". (I first thought just unchecking the notification options would turn off notifications but I believe that just keeps them out of the notification list. The baloons kept popping up.... if memory serves me right.... of course if my memory were any good I would need all these alerts. ;-)

Keep syncing on as the system syncing of reminders and calendar info is what keeps all your devices synced. Calendar also must remain active for Mail (and perhaps other apps) to add events to the calendar. All I did with calendar is remove the icon from my dock.

The setting I have now using BusyCal 2 is fantastic and all my events and reminders sync perfectly between two Macs, an iPhone and an iPad. Finally! I'm back to my Pre-Mountain Lion productivity.

Randy

This annoys the **** out of me. Amateur hour at Apple. Having come over from Microsoft I'm surprised at the number of truly ill conceived features on Mountain Lion and the fact that updates to address these shortcomings are far and wide between. Now I have to buy an App to fix this bug? Now that I'm getting to know Apple firsthand they are really living up to their reputation of "we know what you want better than you do because we make amazing products, deal with it". As good as Mountain Lion is, there are tons of glaring issues that are not being addressed, why all the fanboy-ism? Seems a little misplaced to me.

Mac 101

RandyChev wrote:

Tom,

System Preferences --> Notifications:

Calendar and Reminders: Uncheck all options to notify and set alert style to "None". (I first thought just unchecking the notification options would turn off notifications but I believe that just keeps them out of the notification list. The baloons kept popping up.... if memory serves me right.... of course if my memory were any good I would need all these alerts. ;-)

Keep syncing on as the system syncing of reminders and calendar info is what keeps all your devices synced. Calendar also must remain active for Mail (and perhaps other apps) to add events to the calendar. All I did with calendar is remove the icon from my dock.

The setting I have now using BusyCal 2 is fantastic and all my events and reminders sync perfectly between two Macs, an iPhone and an iPad. Finally! I'm back to my Pre-Mountain Lion productivity.

Randy

Thanks, Randy. I'll give that a try.

As for the former Microsoft user and his comments - everyone to their own. Whatever works for you. I've used both and prefer Apple WAY over Windoze.

Tom

Sadly, support for Office 2008 ends on April 9th. It's only a matter of time. There are several apps that offer adjustable snoozing, but the only one I have found that offers "Snooze until..." is a small app called Pester which is really just an elaborate timer and is not in any way capable of serving as a calendar or serious reminders application. This does not seem like it would be a difficult feature to offer. It is strange that it is so rare.

I gave up waiting for Apple to react - installed BusyCal: works great!

Got it! However, when I click "view" it does not give me the Calendar Event. Nothing happens.

not sure how much hope this provides to anyone but myself but another of my forrestal/ive canaries in the coalmine was just fixed yesterday. The mini player in iTunes 11 lost its progress bar an equally obvious omission. let's hope it's a sign that other great abandoned features will be returning soon.