How to Set Windows Media Player to Start Playing Music Automatically at a Certain Time? – Use as Morning Alarm Clock
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Did you always get bugged by the alarm that goes off near your bed or from your mobile phone? And you always just keep snoozing it for almost an hour before you get up? How about setting Windows Media Player to start playing some nice warm music in the morning to wake you up? I always prefer to play some music when I get up but now its better as its already playing when I get up!!!
Now you can use your computer as an alarm clock without any third party software!
So how to set WMP to start playing music automatically at certain time?
Recently I have been playing with scheduled tasks in Windows 7 and this is an achievement through that feature. (This tutorial is written from Windows 7 but its the same in Windows Vista.)
Click Start and search for Task Scheduler. Click Task Scheduler under Program.
Now click on Create Basic Task on the right sidebar from the Task Scheduler Library.
Give a name and a description as per your own liking. I gave the name as Morning Music. Click Next.
Choose Daily and click Next.
Set the time.
Under Action, choose Start a program and click Next.
Now here are few things you might need to know to help you customize better.
Play only one song – Just browse the song and leave the rest blank.
Play a playlist – Browse wmplayer.exe, usually it resides in ‘C:\program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe’. Under arguments type ‘/Playlist playlistname’ (playlistname should be the actual name of the playlist that you want to play.
Play from DVD – Program is same as above. under arguments type ‘/device:DVD’
Play from Audio CD – Program is same as above. Under arguments type ‘/device:audio CD’
Make sure you check Open the Properties dialog for this task when I click Finish as we need to change some properties. Click Finish.
Now you will get the properties. Here you can view and change any of the settings.
Go to the Conditions tab and change the settings in the Power section like you prefer. You can set it to run only if the computer in on AC power. But make sure you check Wake the computer to run this task as probably you will computer will go to sleep mode when you go to sleep!
Now the Windows Media Player will start at the specified time every day and play the songs from the playlist.
Note: The computer will not start the Windows Media Player if the computer is not switched on and it needs to be logged in.
How to delete this Scheduled Task?
Open the Task Scheduler and click on the Task Scheduler Library on the left sidebar. You will see the list of scheduled tasks. Choose the task and click on Delete from the right sidebar.
[...] How to Set Windows Media Player to Start Playing Music Automatically at a Certain Time? – Use as M… [...]
cool =D
thanks
uh, how do you turn it off if you don’t want it?
@JoJo, I have updated the post to include the tips on how to delete it. If you want to just turn it off, you can use End instead of Delete.
I managed to make this work but it doesn’t actually open media player so I can’t stop the playlist! I’d like it to play until I get up and switch to TV. How would I do that? At the moment I have to restart the PC and I’m sure that’s not right.
Also, how would I get it to open Explorer and then a webpage? Then I could use internet radio
Thanks
@Gem, I am not sure why your media player is not opening. In my case, it opens the player and plays the playlist. Since I have many songs in the list, it plays till I get up. You can also set up the online radio in the playlist and play that. Let me know the radio, I can try it and let you know.
[...] I accidentally found this feature when I was setting up the playlist for my morning alarm using Windows Media Player. Read more on How to Set Windows Media Player to Start Playing Music Automatically at a Certain Time and Use as Mo… [...]
[...] Update: You can also set your Windows Media Player as an Alarm Clock. [...]
thank you so much for this tip
its making me love windows 7 much more
[...] If you are using WMP, you can also learn how to use Windows Media Player as Alarm Clock? [...]
I have set media player to play a playlist but when it starts up it does not start playing the music, I have to click on play why is this? I have tried adding the /play command but this does not work.
I got it to work, but under the action tab go to program/script.
Look up the thing you want to play like a playlist you made not the media player. An example would be
“C:\Users\Glen\Music\Playlists\morning wake up.wpl”
The morning wake up is my playlist I made.
Dont add anything to (add arguments) or (start in).
Keep the action as sart a program. Peace out
Thank you Pirateship79 all is working well now
wow!
dude, this is legend -wait for it- dairy!!!
thank’s a lot! =)
Mr Byte,
This is very helpful. Its been sometime that I was looking for this. Do you any any additional media player options which we can pass with arguments. I am mainly looking for shuffle.
Thank’s a lot again.
Which additional flags exist for wmp?
Is it possible to wake uo from the morning program at HBO?
How it can be done?
Is it also possible to shut the computer down after some fixed amount of time?
And one last question is it possible to start everyweek but at some delay from the previous week (since the morning time changes during the different year seasons)?
Many thanks
Does the application will be closed after all songs were played?
Is it possible to set the application running for some time and the close it to run another application automatically?
Ok i was looking for this but i couldnt find task scheduler in my programs could it be because im on windows xp???? HELP!!!
Hey, I had a question. Is it also possible to set it up in such a way that it won’t start playing during weekends? I love waking up with music and I always turn it on but in the weekend I’d just like to sleep a little longer.
I have found this to be quite buggy/unreliable in Win 7.
If you use file associations, and use your playlist as your “program/script”, task manager does not seem to be able to kill the process after the delay specified (e.g. automatically stop after “2 hours” doesn’t seem to work, wmplayer is still resident in memory).
If the task is run with highest privileges, users will NOT see it as a process in their task manager unless they “Show processes from all users”.
If wmmplayer is not already resident in memory when the task starts, and was run with highest privileges, selecting “End” in task scheduler does not seem to work and the process will need to be killed manually in task manager (by viewing processes from all users).
Presumably, in Vista/Win 7 mode, the user does NOT need to even be logged in for the task to start, but does need to make sure the login/password is stored. Of course, if the password is wrong, there is no warning. The task simply won’t work.
For no weekends, use “weekly” and check the days you want it to run.
So i’ve followed the steps in the main article and the step given by pirtateship79 and it’s not working.
lytebyte instructions result: 6am wmp is open and has my playlist loaded but not playing songs.
pirateship: zip
i’m using vista and wmp 11