8.6 Taking notes with a relative timer

When taking notes during, for example, a meeting or a video viewing, it can be useful to have access to times relative to a starting time. Org provides such a relative timer and make it easy to create timed notes.

C-c C-x .     (org-timer)

Insert a relative time into the buffer. The first time you use this, the timer will be started. When called with a prefix argument, the timer is restarted.

C-c C-x -     (org-timer-item)

Insert a description list item with the current relative time. With a prefix argument, first reset the timer to 0.

M-<RET>     (org-insert-heading)

Once the timer list is started, you can also use M-<RET> to insert new timer items.

C-c C-x ,

Pause the timer, or continue it if it is already paused (org-timer-pause-or-continue).

C-u C-c C-x ,

Stop the timer. After this, you can only start a new timer, not continue the old one. This command also removes the timer from the mode line.

C-c C-x 0     (org-timer-start)

Reset the timer without inserting anything into the buffer. By default, the timer is reset to 0. When called with a C-u prefix, reset the timer to specific starting offset. The user is prompted for the offset, with a default taken from a timer string at point, if any, So this can be used to restart taking notes after a break in the process. When called with a double prefix argument C-u C-u, change all timer strings in the active region by a certain amount. This can be used to fix timer strings if the timer was not started at exactly the right moment.