Putting events in a calendar app is (obviously) the most proactive way to stay “aware” of when something, be it a birthday, personal event, appointment, public holiday, etc, is due to happen.
But it’s less mindful.
For me, knowing that it is, say, 202 days to Christmas, or 128 days to the next Ubuntu release gives me a better contextual understanding of when and how soon something is.
On Linux, you can ‘countdown’ to any event you like using a neat open-source app of the same name. This tool makes it easy to track events yet to happen as well as those that happened in the past, e.g., 5 days since you got your shiny new laptop.
You may be interested to know:
- days until a distro/game/music release
- days until a birthday or special occasion
- days until a deadline
- days until a public holiday
- days since an event
And using Countdown, you can do that.
Click the floating bubble in the lower right corner of the window, type in a title (e.g., “Mom’s birthday”), enter the date in DD-MM-YYYY, then hit ‘add event.
Your entry instantly appears in the main UI under ‘upcoming’ with the number of days until it shown. To see events that happened in the past select the ‘past’ tab.
Be aware of a known bug: the app will crash if you enter a month as a single digit (i.e. enter ’06’ for June, not just ‘6’).
Were I able to wave a magic wand and add more features I’d make created countdowns editable, and allow countdowns to show different time periods, e.g., “years”, “weeks”, heck, “minutes” could be a fun one.
So if you’re looking for a simple countdown app for Linux, give this one a go. It’s simple, easy to use, and does one thing well.
• Get Countdown on Flathub
