Devine timer for PowerPoint

A simple countdown timer you place on a slide. You set the time while building the deck and click it to start during the presentation. The digits scale to whatever size you make the box.

Using it

Where	What
Editing	Insert it through Insert → Add-ins → My Add-ins → Devine timer. Set the time in the row under the digits (min / sec, or the 5·10·15·20 presets) and pick Light or Dark. Drag the corners to resize it; the digits follow.
Presenting	Click the timer to start, pause or resume. Double-click resets it.
Keys (after you click the timer once)	Space / Enter / S start or pause. R resets. Arrows, PageUp/PageDown and presenter clickers still move the slides; the timer passes them back to PowerPoint.
At zero	The timer stops at 0:00 and turns red.

Each timer saves its own duration and style inside the .pptx, so different slides can have different timers.

Presenter View

In Presenter View, PowerPoint keeps the keyboard for itself, so the timer's keys don't work there. The slide preview in Presenter View is a picture, not the live timer; clicking it just advances the slide. To start a timer without touching the audience screen, tick Auto-start in the timer's settings row. The countdown then starts from the full time every time that slide appears in a slideshow. You can still click the timer on the audience screen (for example on the second display) to pause or reset it.

Note: PowerPoint may reload the add-in when you move away from its slide and come back. If that happens, the timer resets to its full duration.

Development (localhost)

npm install
npm run certs      # one-time: installs a trusted localhost HTTPS certificate
npm start          # serves docs/ at https://localhost:3000
npm run sideload   # copies manifest.dev.xml into PowerPoint's add-in folder (Mac)

If sideload fails with Operation not permitted, macOS is protecting PowerPoint's container folder. Either give your terminal app Full Disk Access (System Settings → Privacy & Security), or drag manifest.dev.xml into ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Powerpoint/Data/Documents/wef/ with Finder (⇧⌘G to go there; create wef if it doesn't exist).

Restart PowerPoint. Devine timer (dev) then appears under Insert → Add-ins → My Add-ins, under the Developer Add-ins heading. The dev server has to be running whenever you use the dev version.

To test in a plain browser, open https://localhost:3000/?view=read&s=10. view=read previews the slideshow look and s sets the duration in seconds. Add &auto=1 to test auto-start.

Publishing (GitHub Pages)

The add-in is published from devinekask/devine-timer at https://devinekask.github.io/devine-timer/ (GitHub Pages: branch main, folder /docs). manifest.xml points there.

1. Push to main; Pages redeploys within a minute or two.
2. To install the published version, run npm run sideload:prod (or drag manifest.xml into the wef folder, see above) and restart PowerPoint. Devine timer works without a local server.

If the repo or account changes, update the 4 URLs in manifest.xml to match.

To share it with colleagues, give them manifest.xml. On Windows, they add it through a shared-folder catalog; alternatively, an admin can deploy it through the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Files

• docs/index.html, timer.css, timer.js: the add-in itself (no build step)
• manifest.dev.xml: points to https://localhost:3000
• manifest.xml: points to GitHub Pages
• docs/assets/icon.svg, icon-small.svg: icon sources; scripts/make-icons.sh renders them to icon-64.png / icon-32.png (needs Inkscape)