Updated 2 years ago
When I went to university, I really liked the rhythm of the day and night set by the bell tower in the middle of campus. I put this bundle together that does just that on your computer. It takes a little setup but the subtle boost to your home ambience is priceless and permanent.
Like classic bell towers, plus a voice telling you the time.
This method is not plug and play, and requires intermediate computer knowledge, but it should only have to be done once, and assuming you save the folder and your app settings, it can easily follow you around different Windows installations and devices.
The audio is subtle and not loud; if your speakers are turned down to “low” you won’t hear it. This is by design.
For the bell chimes, you could buy a program that does this , such as here or here.
But you can set it up yourself manually and have greater control. You can either create your own set of scheduled tasks, which works fine, but takes an extra step for manually backing up and feels slightly wonkier when reinstalling Windows and dealing with Task Scheduler. For this reason, I suggest simply downloading the freeware “System Scheduler” and creating 17 events
Use the tones in this folder for the audio each increment. This folder has all the scripts you need.
Every 15 minute increment has its own unique cadence.
Each hour plays 1-12 rings depending on the hour.
Note I also have a script that says the time, using a VBS script. Specifically, add an event that runs “Say Time” every 15 minutes, and link the vbs file in the zipped folder linked above:
Make sure it points to the file in the indicated folder. Especially for the “Say Time,” this must be entered precisely or it won’t work.
You can manually adjust the text to speech voice in Windows by typing TTS in the search box, “Change text to speech settings.” This is where any voices you have bought from a 3rd party (such as Ivona) will really shine.
Next, in System Scheduler add the 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, and hourly tones:
Then, add in an event for each of the 12 hours. Note that am or pm does not matter!
Finally, you must enable this in your antivirus/Windows Defender settings because otherwise you can be certain the Visual Basic Scripts scripts will set off all sorts of alarms.
Have fun! This really isn’t that hard, just need to understand how System Scheduler works and to manually add each event correctly. System Scheduler is nice because you can use it for all sorts of things, like saving or running a program..
If you have any questions contact me or add a comment below.
