Shutter 4.5.0

If in need of a simple utility to concatenate a number of actions and events and schedule them to be executed on your system automatically following your requirements, Shutter is an excellent option to consider. Available in two versions, Lite and Pro, the former will let you schedule up to five presets, events, and actions in the most intuitive way. The latter has no restrictions whatsoever and can be used in a commercial environment.

Lite is the free version of Shutter. Despite its limitations, this fully-functional utility is probably what most of you will ever require to fulfill your day-to-day work and leisure needs. You will miss its prioritized technical support, password-protected access, and a web interface for remote scheduling, but unless you’re on an enterprise environment, these limitations won’t stop you from enjoying the program’s useful main functionality.

Shutter won’t just shut down your computer when required – it is capable of triggering a number of different events in an orderly and automated fashion, allowing you to assign a series of actions to each event. These various combinations of events and actions can be then stored as presets for future use. The list of events include a countdown, CPU and network usage, what to do when Winamp stops, when a certain window closes, hard disk usage, inactive user, low battery, when ping stops, and even what happens when you close your laptop lid. This is not the complete list, and each of these events comes with its own settings, so that you can customize their behavior to fit your specific needs.

The list of actions includes, among others, PC shutdown, reboot, log off, sleep, and hibernation; volume control, alarm, message, play sound, run program, or open file, to name some of them. These come also with their own settings, depending on what they do. Events and actions can be combined in whatever way fits your requirements and you can run them right away or schedule them to be executed when needed. A “Now” button will let you test the effectiveness of the selected effect right away – useful with alarms and volume mute actions, mainly.

Shutter is a light tool that is also available as a portable edition. Suitable for all users, it allows for full automation of a number of common and less common actions, saving you time at your computer and the inconvenience of executing all those repetitive routines that we perform periodically. It allows you to leave your computer unattended, knowing that your event list will be accurately executed whenever the conditions you set up are met.