You mute your Mac during a call, put in noise-canceling headphones to focus, or just keep the volume low out of habit. Then a timer finishes and you never hear the chime. Ten minutes later you notice the notification sitting quietly in the corner, long after the moment it was supposed to alert you about has passed.
Sound and even visual notifications share the same weakness: they assume you're paying attention to audio or actively looking at the screen at the exact right second. Neither is a safe assumption.
Why most timers rely on sound alone
Every built-in timer option on macOS — the Clock app, Siri, calendar alerts — signals completion with a chime and a banner notification. If Do Not Disturb is on, if your volume is at zero, or if you're wearing headphones playing something else, that signal simply doesn't reach you. There's no fallback channel.
The fix: Tickpull
Tickpull adds a physical channel to the alert. On MacBooks with a Force Touch trackpad, a timer completing triggers a haptic tap you feel through your fingertips or wrists the moment it happens — independent of your volume settings, headphones, or Do Not Disturb status.
Working with headphones in
Deep in a call or listening to music at full volume, a chime doesn't stand a chance. The haptic tap lands regardless of what's playing in your ears.
Shared and quiet spaces
Libraries, open offices, or a house where someone's asleep all call for silence. A tactile alert tells you a timer finished without a sound reaching anyone else in the room.
Do Not Disturb during focus sessions
If you silence notifications while deep in work, a haptic tap still gets through as long as your hand is resting near the trackpad — a channel banner notifications simply don't have.