LacPointer Task Scheduler: Automate the Boring Stuff
LacPointer has a built-in Task Scheduler that most people walk right past. Set recurring reminders, auto-launch apps, or run system commands on a schedule — all without touching a third-party tool.
The Reminder Problem Nobody Talks About
I have a graveyard of "automation" setups from the past few years. Cron jobs I forgot existed. Apple Shortcuts that broke after an OS update. Notion reminders that fire at the wrong time because I set them in the wrong timezone. A Zapier free plan I maxed out doing something I barely remember.
The common thread: every solution lived somewhere separate from where I actually work. I'd have to go configure it, remember the syntax, and then hope it still ran six weeks later.
LacPointer's Task Scheduler sits inside the same bar I already have open with Option+Space. It doesn't require a separate app, a config file, or a subscription to another service. And it handles the four things I actually need scheduled: one-time reminders, daily habits, weekday-only nudges, and weekly recurring tasks.
Reminders — a notification fires at the time you specify, with whatever message you wrote
App launches — LacPointer opens a specific app on the schedule you set
System commands — run a shell command on a schedule, no terminal babysitting needed
And each of those can repeat on five cadences: once, daily, weekdays only, weekly, or monthly. That covers probably 95% of what I'd ever want to automate on my own machine.
Setting One Up
Open LacPointer with Option+Space, then navigate to the Task Scheduler section from the sidebar. Hit the button to create a new task and you get a clean form. Give it a name, pick the type (reminder, app launch, or command), set the time and recurrence, and save.
That's it. No YAML. No cron expression like 0 9 * * 1-5 that you have to Google every single time.
If you pick app launch, you point it at the app on your system. If you pick a system command, you type the command directly into the field — same as you'd type it in a terminal. It runs it at the scheduled time in the background.
Here's my current task list, because concrete examples are more useful than abstract descriptions:
Daily standup reminder at 9:45 AM
I work async most of the time, but we do a standup at 10. I used to rely on Google Calendar for this, which meant getting a notification from a browser tab I'd minimised two hours ago. Now LacPointer fires a desktop reminder at 9:45 AM every weekday that just says "standup in 15 mins, write your update." It actually surfaces because LacPointer is already on top of everything else.
Open Spotify on weekday mornings
This one sounds trivial but I love it. At 8:30 AM Monday through Friday, LacPointer launches Spotify. My morning playlist starts playing. I didn't have to touch anything. I set it once, it just happens.
Weekly project cleanup command
Every Friday at 5 PM, I have a system command task that runs a short shell script. It clears out my ~/Downloads folder of anything older than 14 days and empties a specific temp directory I use for quick file drops. Nothing critical, but the kind of housekeeping that otherwise builds up for months until it becomes a problem. The command looks like:
find ~/Downloads -mtime +14 -type f -delete
I used to have this in a cron job. I forgot about it for eight months, then it silently stopped running after I migrated to a new machine. With the Task Scheduler, I can see every task in one list, check what's active, and edit or delete with two clicks.
End of day wind-down reminder
At 6:30 PM daily, a reminder fires that just says "wrap it up." No deep meaning behind it — it's a context switch trigger. Without it, I notice I'll often keep working in a vague, low-energy way for an extra hour without actually shipping anything useful. The reminder makes the decision for me.
The Part That Makes It Better Than Cron
Cron is fine if you live in a terminal all day. But the feedback loop is bad. You set a job, and unless you explicitly go check, you don't know if it ran, failed, or got silently killed. There's no visible list of "here are all your scheduled things and when they last ran."
The Task Scheduler in LacPointer shows you everything in one place. You can toggle tasks on and off without deleting them, which matters when you want to pause something temporarily. The reminders surface as proper desktop notifications, not as output buried in a log file you never open.
For system commands, yes, you lose some of the raw power of full cron syntax — you can't do something like "every 5 minutes between 9 AM and noon on the 1st and 15th of the month." But honestly? I've never needed that. One of these five cadences covers everything I've wanted to automate on my own machine.
You can also ask LacPointer to create a task using voice. Press Cmd+Shift+V and say something like "remind me every weekday at 9:45 to write my standup update." It'll create the task for you. I use this when I think of something I want to schedule mid-flow and don't want to stop what I'm doing to open the form manually.
It's not magic — the voice command works best for reminders rather than system commands — but for the simple "remind me at X to do Y on Z schedule" use case it's surprisingly quick.
Get Started
If you haven't touched the Task Scheduler yet, the fastest way to start is to replace one thing you currently do with a third-party tool. If you have a recurring reminder in Google Calendar for something that isn't actually a calendar event, move it here. If you have a cron job for something simple, move it here too.
Download LacPointer if you haven't already, open it with Option+Space, and set one task today. The scheduler lives right there next to everything else you already use it for — no new app to remember, no config to maintain.
