TimeFluence

A fluid countdown timer that maps your time, not just counts it.

Compatibility

macOS 12 or later and Windows 10 or later, on every Elgato Stream Deck running Stream Deck software 7.1 or later. Dials and the touch strip need a Stream Deck +.

Four different timers running on a Stream Deck +. One across all four dials, and three across two keys each.

TimeFluence is a countdown timer with tons of customization options, and it fits where you have space, automatically grouping adjacent keys or dials into a single timer — that is the default, not a rule, and the timer map in its settings lets you split a group into separate timers or join them back. Your timer drains right to left along the dials, the touch strip and a row of keys, and top to bottom down a column of keys or on a key by itself.

Divide a timer into colored, named segments with their own lengths, sounds and colors, so a glance tells you which part of your time you are in, not just how much is left. Chain timers end to end to map out a part or the whole of your day.

Features

What else can you do with TimeFluence?

Run several independent timers at once, on keys, on dials, or on both.
Split and join them yourself in the timer map, whenever the automatic grouping is not the arrangement you wanted.
Leave them running while you work on an entirely different Stream Deck page.
Wind the countdown back or forward with the dial, without reshaping the timeline.
Turn the swimming fish and the bubbles on or off, or switch off every moving thing at once.
Let Jimothy the raccoon wander in.
If you have one or more Philips Hue lights that use your bridge, you can assign them a TimeFluence timer so they sync to match the color of the segment you are in.

Seeing it

On the touch strip across the dials, TimeFluence really shines.

A Stream Deck touch strip at three moments of one session: the bar drains from right to left through blue, green and amber stages while the clock counts down from 48:00 to 4:10. — An example of the timer elapsing on the dials. A timer can be divided into up to eight segments, each with its own options: color, label or no label, and with or without an alert sound.

Six Stream Deck keys running three separate countdowns: a run of three showing 39:00, a pair showing 14:00, and one on its own. A colored wavy line under each run marks which keys belong together. — Three runs of keys, three separate timers. The colored wave says which keys belong together.

Customization

Fluidity demands customization

Segments

Colored, labelled stages, each with its own length.

Sound

Volume, fades, and your own WAV files.

Type

Six typefaces, four sizes, three time formats.

Endings

Flash, stop, loop, or start another timer.

Settings

How to control TimeFluence from the Settings in the Stream Deck app.

All of this is set inside the Stream Deck software: click a key or a dial you have put TimeFluence on, and the panel opens beside it. There are three sections and every one of them folds away, so you can shut what you are not using.

The editable timer map: a diagram of eight keys in two rows above a row of four dials. Short blue bars link the controls that share a timer, and dotted gaps sit between the ones that do not. Below the diagram, one dropdown per timer names the preset it is running. — The map detects your Stream Deck configuration and which keys/dials you have given TimeFluence control of. They will appear in the map. A blue bar connecting keys or dials means one timer shared across those controls. A dotted gap means two timers with a join available, and a control that is a timer by itself is outlined with a dashed line.

Click a blue bar to split timers apart, or a dotted gap to join them back. Only joins that make a straight run are offered, so an arrangement TimeFluence could not run is not one you can draw: no L-shapes, T-shapes, or non-adjacent controls — single-row or single-column runs of keys, and only horizontal runs of dials.

Underneath the timer map, a dropdown for each timer says which preset it is running (and lets you change it), showing where a timer spans more than one control, with a swatch that sets the color of the wave that links keys. You can turn off the group color swatch in the Display settings.

The Display section: Allow motion and Group color checkboxes, a folded 'What this does' explanation, then two folded subsections — Special events, holding a 'Let special events visit' checkbox, and Philips Hue, marked 'not set up'. — Display holds the settings that are about you rather than about a timer. Allow motion is a master switch: with it off nothing moves anywhere, whatever a preset asks for. Special events is one switch for all of them, so you are only ever asked once. Philips Hue is where a bridge is set up, and it stays folded away and marked "not set up" if you have none.

Lights

Have your lights match the segment color you are in

TimeFluence can drive Philips Hue lights that use a bridge. Connect your bridge to TimeFluence and designate a timer for the lights you want to use, and it will display the color of the segment the countdown is in and change with it at every boundary.

Four photographs of the same Stream Deck side by side, in a room lit by a Philips Hue lamp. Left to right the whole scene is blue, then green, then amber, then red, and the touch strip reads 33 min 25 sec, 31 min 7 sec, 10 min 13 sec and 1 min 36 sec — the colored bar shrinking from nearly full to a small red block as the time runs down. — One timer at four moments, with a Philips Hue GO light demonstrating the color matching to the timeline segment as time depletes.

It needs a Hue bridge — the small square box that comes with a starter kit. Bluetooth-only Hue bulbs have no bridge and cannot do this.

The Philips Hue section inside Display, opened: a heading reading Philips Hue, Hue Bridge, 1 assigned; an Allow Hue lights checkbox, ticked; a folded What this does explanation; a Keep the last color when a timer ends checkbox, unticked, with its own folded explanation; a line reading Hue Bridge, 192.168.1.24, id ending 47a2; and two buttons side by side, Stop using my lights and Forget this bridge. — Setting the bridge up lives in Display. TimeFluence looks for it on your own network, you press the round button on the bridge to let it in, and that is the whole of it.

Two sections inside the editable timer map. Hue lights: three bulbs, each with its name, its room, a dot showing the color it is being given, and a dropdown naming the timer that drives it — Hue Go set to Dials 1-4, Desk lamp marked switched off and set to None, Hall downlight greyed out and marked white only, cannot show a color. Then Light controls: the same three bulbs, each with a Turn off or Turn on button, a Blink button, and a brightness slider reading 78, 40 and 100 percent. — Two jobs, so two sections. **Hue lights** is which timer drives which bulb. A light follows one timer at a time; a timer can drive as many lights as you like. **Light controls** is the lamp itself: on, off, how bright, and Blink to tell which one is which.

Presets

Making and editing your timers

The timeline group opened: a bar split into four colored segments with white grips between them, a Whole timeline field reading 1 hour, a Per dial turn field reading 1 minute, plus and minus buttons, and below them the editor for the chosen segment, with its label, length, color, label color, pulse, sound and repeat. — The timeline is drawn the way it drains — right to left, the first segment spent sitting at the right-hand end. Click a band to edit it: label, length, color, sound. Drag a grip to move time from one segment into its neighbour.

Dragging never changes how long the timer runs. It moves time across the boundary in whole dial turns, so it lands on round numbers instead of odd seconds. That step is Per dial turn — the same figure that decides how far one click of the dial scrubs the countdown, and the one everything else on the bar obeys: splitting a segment and the length of the whole timeline both land on a whole number of turns.

Both boxes are written in whatever unit suits the timer — seconds, minutes, hours or days — and they need not match: a four-hour stream is easiest to think about in hours while its dial still turns five minutes at a time. Changing the unit only changes how the box reads; it never changes the timer. The one field that changes the length is Whole timeline: make it longer and the extra arrives as a new segment on the end; make it shorter and the time comes off the end. The + button splits the chosen segment in two, up to eight of them.

A removal prompt outlined in red inside the timeline section, reading: Remove Outro? Its 10:00 has to go to one of the segments beside it, so the timeline stays 1:00:00 long. Which one should have it? Below are three buttons: a left arrow labelled End, one labelled segment 2 with a right arrow, and Keep it. — Removing a segment asks where its time should go. The arrows point the way the bar runs.

Controls

How TimeFluence works on your Stream Deck

Every control does the job its position gives it, so the same plugin has a different vocabulary on one dial than it has on four. A hold is about half a second. Tapping a section of the touch strip is the same as pressing the dial beneath it.

Winding the dial: three hours twelve down to two forty-seven, and back up again. Every segment keeps its own length the whole way through. The dial changes where you are in the timeline, never the shape of it.

One dial on its own
Do this	And this happens
Press it	Start or pause. Once the timer has run out, the first press reloads it at full length and the next one starts it
Turn it	Wind the countdown back or forward
Hold it	Open Quick Select. With one dial this is the only way in, because that dial is doing both jobs at once
Turn it in Quick Select	Move through your presets
Press it in Quick Select	Load the one you have landed on
Wait	Quick Select closes itself after about seven seconds, changing nothing

Two, three or four dials side by side
Do this	And this happens
Press the leftmost dial	Start or pause. Once the timer has run out, the first press reloads it at full length and the next one starts it
Turn the leftmost dial	Wind the countdown back or forward
Turn the rightmost dial	Open Quick Select, and keep turning to move through your presets
Press the rightmost dial	Open Preset Select — or, once you are in either mode, load the preset you have landed on
Press a middle dial	Nothing while the timer is running. In Quick Select or Preset Select it cancels, leaving the loaded timer alone
Hold any dial	Registers as a normal press — and on the rightmost dial that press opens Preset Select, which previews what each of your timers looks like while your own timer carries on counting. Turn the rightmost dial to move between presets and press it to load one, or use a middle dial to exit back to the timer you had running. Preset Select waits as long as you need — it is Quick Select, not this, that closes itself after seven seconds.

Keys, on any Stream Deck
Do this	And this happens
Tap	Start or pause. Any key in a run does it. Once the timer has run out, the first tap reloads it at full length and the next one starts it
Hold	Open Quick Select
Tap in Quick Select	Move to the next preset
Hold in Quick Select	Load the one you have landed on
Wait	Quick Select closes itself after about seven seconds, changing nothing

Keys work the same whether there is one of them or six; what changes is what they draw. A key on its own carries the name and the clock together, while a run of keys spreads one countdown across all of them.

Two timer selection modes, whenever two or more dials share one timer

Both can be accessed using the rightmost dial. One is for switching quickly; the other is for looking properly and seeing a preview of the other timer before you commit. Neither stops your timer while you are choosing — the time you spend looking is time that really passed, so if you back out, the original running timer continues uninterrupted. Loading one is the moment that ends it: the timer you pick arrives at its full length and waits for you to start it.

Leftmost and rightmost are read within one timer, not across the deck. Split four dials into two timers in the map and each pair has its own leftmost and rightmost dial; split them into single dials and each one follows the one-dial column above instead.

Quick Select — turn the rightmost dial

Shows: The preset's name only will flash, showing it as an option you can load.
Move: Keep turning.
Load: Press the rightmost dial to lock in and load your selection. It arrives at full length and paused; press the leftmost dial to start it.
Leave: Press any other dial, or just wait — it closes itself after about seven seconds and changes nothing.

Preset Select — press the rightmost dial

Shows: A preview of the whole timeline of the preset you are looking at — its full length, and, if that timer keeps a color per segment, every segment in its own color. The preset name will flash, showing it as the option you can load.
Move: Turn the rightmost dial.
Load: Press the rightmost dial to lock in and load your selection. It arrives at full length and paused; press the leftmost dial to start it.
Leave: Press any dial that is not the rightmost — a middle or the leftmost dial will do. It also leaves on its own if the running timer reaches zero while you are browsing.

Included

Five timers to start with

Streaming, Pomodoro, 1-hr Session, Meeting 30, Presentation. Edit them freely, or build your own from nothing — up to eight segments per timer.

Streaming
Pomodoro
1-hr Session
Meeting 30
Presentation

Special events

Perhaps a famous Seattle raccoon

For now, special events are exclusive to the dials (the touch strip) and require at least two dials in a row in order to activate.

Jimothy, on the spent end of the bar, entirely uninterested in your deadline.

Special events will arrive to TimeFluence occasionally, such as Jimothy, who may wander onto the spent end of the bar if you have enough dials activated in a row. He is off by default in the preferences until you ask for him — and, like everything else that moves, he stays away while motion is switched off. He is rare on purpose: he can only turn up once a timeline is past halfway, and then only now and again, so any one timer is unlikely to have him. If you would rather not wait, a timer can be set to invite him every run. Tap him while he is there and he will notice. If you enjoy surprises like this, more events will arrive with updates and come and go with the seasons.

Requirements

What you need

Stream Deck software7.1 or later

macOS12 or later

Windows10 or later

Dials and touch stripStream Deck +

Keysany Stream Deck, including Stream Deck Mobile and Virtual Stream Deck

Hue lightsoptional, needs a bridge

Version1.0

Coming to the Elgato Marketplace. TimeFluence is installed through Elgato's Marketplace, from inside the Stream Deck software. This page will link to it the day it is published.

Get in touch

Feedback, bugs, and things it should do next

Email TimeFluence@mapthematics.com with feedback, to report a bug, or to request a feature. Tell us which Stream Deck you have and how your keys or dials are arranged — that is usually the first thing we need to know.

TimeFluence is made by Tiffany Lillie from Mapthematics LLC, in Seattle.