New Plugin: TimeWise-Countdown, an inline deadline countdown

[flxholle]

Dear all,
I wrote a new plugin, mainly for my own use, called TimeWise Countdown. The code is here: Felix Hollederer / TimeWise Countdown · GitLab

As I did not find a form to officially submit my plugin for adding it to Joplin Plugins I will post it here.

And I welcome everyone to share their opinion and valuable feedback.
(As a new member I cannot share multiple links and images, so I will post the readme in a later post)

[flxholle]

TimeWise Countdown

TimeWise Countdown is a plugin that continually calculates and displays the time remaining until a specified deadline.

TimeWise Countdown is a plugin that continually calculates and displays the time remaining until a specified deadline. It allows easy customization and formatting.

([Back to top](#top))

Usage

TimeWise Countdown identifies special deadline markers in your text and replaces them with a live countdown. The markers follow this format:

[output](d[DEADLINE]{TEMPLATE})

• output: The parsed template output
• DEADLINE: The target time; if this date/time has passed, the plugin shows zeros.
  • Supported deadline formats:
    1. year-month-day:hour-minute (e.g., 2025-12-31:13-45)
    2. year-month-day (e.g., 2025-12-31)
    3. hour-minute (e.g., 13-45)
    4. Short years (less than 100) are interpreted as 20xx. For example, 25-12-31 -> 2025-12-31.
• TEMPLATE: Specifies how the remaining time should be displayed. Separate tokens with underscores ( _ becomes a space).

Template Tokens

Each letter indicates how to count down:

• y = Years
• m = Months
• w = Weeks
• d = Days
• H = Hours
• M = Minutes

All non-token text (e.g., years, days, minutes) remains literal. For example:

y_years_d_days_M_minutes

could output something like 1 years 9 days 30 minutes.

Examples

1. Full Date-Time

   [](d[2025-01-10:14-00]{y_years_d_days_H_hours})
   

   • Suppose today is 2024-01-01 00:00.
   • This might display: [1 years 9 days 14 hours](d[2025-01-10:14-00]{y_years_d_days_H_hours})

2. Date Only

   [](d[2025-01-10]{m_months_d_days})
   

   • With a current date of 2024-01-01, you might see: [12 months 9 days](d[2025-01-10]{m_months_d_days}).

3. Time Only

   [](d[15-30]{H_hours_M_minutes})
   

   • If it's currently 09:00, it could show: [6 hours 30 minutes](d[15-30]{H_hours_M_minutes}).

4. Short Year

   [](d[25-01-01]{y_years_m_months})
   

   • Interpreted as 2025-01-01, so if we're in 2024-01-01, that might be: [1 years 0 months](d[25-01-01]{y_years_m_months}).

5. Week Calculation

   [](d[2024-02-15]{w_weeks_d_days})
   

   • If only a few weeks remain until Feb 15, 2024, this might read: [2 weeks 3 days](...).

6. Past Deadlines

   • If the deadline is in the past, all tokens become zero, e.g.:

   [](d[2023-12-31]{y_years_d_days_H_hours})
   

   becomes:

   [0 years 0 days 0 hours](d[2023-12-31]{y_years_d_days_H_hours})
   

([Back to top](#top))

Build

Prerequisites

Make sure you have Node.js (and npm) installed.

npm install npm@latest -g

Installation

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://gitlab.com/flxholle/timewise-countdown.git
   

2. Install NPM packages

   npm install
   

3. Build the plugin: The plugin is built using Webpack, which creates the compiled code in /dist

   npm run dist
   

4. (Optional) Change git remote url to avoid accidental pushes to the base project

   git remote set-url origin https://gitlab.com/flxholle/timewise-countdown.git
   git remote -v # confirm the changes
   

([Back to top](#top))

Contributing

Contributions make open source amazing. If you have an idea or fix, please:

1. Fork the Project
2. Create a new branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

([Back to top](#top))

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for details.

[flxholle]

I also published the plugin in npm: joplin-plugin-timewise-countdown - npm
If there is anything more I can do to get this added to Joplin Plugins please let me know

[Sad-Abd]

Great job @flxholle, really loved this plugin.

@flxholle

I did not find a form to officially submit my plugin for adding it to Joplin Plugins

I think @personalizedrefriger can help you with that.

[flxholle]

The plugin is now available in Joplin: Joplin Plugins - TimeWise Countdown

[WilliamWD]

Thanks a lot for this convenient and clever plugin.

I thought it didn't work, but you have to leave and come back to the note to have the result.
Nice job.

[flxholle]

Yes, unfortunately if it would update immediately, it wouldn't let you finish typing the date, but immediately overwrite it with the first text matching the format

[flxholle]

Hey all, I added a count-up feature, that was suggested via a direct message.
In this mode the days are counted up, since a specific date has passed, e.g. good for tracking birthdays.
It works by using the letter u (for up) instead: [output](u[STARTDATE]{TEMPLATE}).
A longer explanation is in the README

[t0dd]

FYI. If, while within Joplin, I go to Tools > Options > Plugins and search for timewise and then click on the link for the plugin, it does not go to a project page showing how it is used. Instead it leads to your more "these are the projects I am working on" page and I couldn't find TimeWise in that list of projects very readily. Plus, I had to translate it. (Heh. But that is not a big deal anymore.)

Anyway. The link on the plugin installation section of the application should lead to somewhere more sensible.

[flxholle]

Thanks. I didnt know that, I thought that homepage is for the homepage of the developer (me), because there is also a repository_url (see here)
I will change it in the next update

[WilliamWD]

The up counter is a nice addition. Wouldn't have thought about it, but I already found a usage.

Thanks @flxholle

[Steph]

@flxholle

As I did not find a form to officially submit my plugin for adding it to Joplin Plugins

Showcase: Plugin to record audio directly within Joplin using your system's microphone

I finally found out how to publish to the joplin plugin repos, joplin-folder-mapping/GENERATOR_DOC.md at master · yimisunrise/joplin-folder-mapping · GitHub this doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the official docs Anyway I followed those steps, so in theory the plugin should appear in that menu in a few hours For the other features you asked, I'll see what I can do

[WilliamWD]

@flxholle, is there a way to add text in template ?
For instance, I'd like to be able to have
Week-end copains [](d[2025-05-8]{w_/_d_})
showing
Week-end copains 0 / 3

And would you think about a graphical template using a number of characters instead of numbers ?
For instance

Task start [](u[2025-04-29]{g_days})
task end [](d[2025-05-17]{g_days})

would output

Task start *****
Task end ************

I don't know what letters you could use in template, but I can think about it.
There's surely a more appropriate character to use as an output than the * (don't know if checkbox could be possible), but it was just for a quick view.

[flxholle]

I dont fully understand your questions.
For the first one: All letters that are not key-characters (which also must not be part of a word, e.g. d_days only the first d is recognized) are rendered. So [](d[2025-05-08]{week-end_copains_w_/_d}) would output your desired text.
The second one is unclear to me. Do you mean it would output x stars if the starting date is x days in the future?