Open an Application at specific time in Mac OS X

Question

I am tired of opening Skype everday; I need a little script to set the hour to open and the hour to close.

Answer 1

Set up an iCal event, repeating everyday and telling him to Run Script as an alarm.

Answer 2

Does it NEED to be Python? OS X comes with Automator, (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/) which is sort of designed for these kinds of tasks.

Answer 3

Or you could have it on a crontab (think something like launchd in OS X)

Answer 4

Do you open Skype on log in? If so, add Skype to your login items as when you log out it will shut the program down as well.

To add a program to your Login Items:

1. Open up System Preferences
2. Click the Accounts Preference Pane
3. Click on Login Items
4. Press the '+' symbol and find Skype.app and press OK
5. You're done.

or

1. Right/Control click on Skype in your Dock and choose "Open At Login" (in the Options submenu in Snow Leopard)

If for some reason logging in and out doesn't work for you Automator or a timed script (using cron, launchd or iCal) is possible. For how to do this check out Question 126907 (How can I get a script to run every day on Mac OS X?). You'll just have to set up it up twice, with one script opening Skype (open /Applications/Skype.app) and another quitting Skype (eg. killall Skype - for a force quit). You can set the times it opens and closes using those scripts.