This is more of a UX concern rather than a technical issue.

Given that:

1. Laptop users frequently unplug charger to keep the battery sustainable.
2. Due to social distancing, we spend a lot of time with our laptop as somewhat a desktop.
3. Broadly speaking, the client preferences only concern users with how to suspend computation.
4. Therefore, even a relatively active laptop with BOINC installed won't do almost any computation.

I think there should be an easy, fast option for a user to override the Computing Preferences and allow computation regardless of any conditions (battery, mouse/keyboard, etc.).
The Advance View gives this kind of option under "Activity" menu, as "Run Always" (both for CPU and GPU). But I couldn't access it (easily enough?) from the Simple View. Even the System Tray right-click context menu on the BOINC icon only lets me to "Snooze".
On the other hand, I would like to have more control on how long should I allow BOINC computing whilst working. There is an option for allowing computation only between some time interval, but there could be many of those, and different intervals for different days.

Therefore, I suggest the following features for the client:

1. Right-click on the System Tray icon --> "Allow computation time" --> a window opens in which the user can set a timer (countdown) for override-computation period --> when the timer starts, all standard preferences have no impact, until the timer ends. I believe this will enhance user engagement which will amount to an increase in accumulative computation time.
2. In Computing Preferences, A scheduler (calendar based) for numerous "Computation allowed" time intervals. Each time interval of such should have its own independent preferences: most users wouldn't mind if the default setting is to ignore mouse/keyboard inputs during this interval.

I guess I havn't thought of anything new, but COVID-19 repercussions (and the growing frustration with seeing Rosseta@Home and WCG suspended more often than not) got me thinking. Could be a major improvement in light of recent events.

Thank you, cheers.

Good point galbezalel.
In addition to your suggestions I could provide a lot more computing time, if it could be possible to differ the settings between a couple of time periods.

Right now I may only adjust if I allow computing or not with certain restricitions of cpu limits and so on.
Due to highly noisy fan activities I've stopped computing while I'm working. But if I could adjust that at least one or two cpu's are allowed to work whilst working and even more while I'm not working, we could easily increase the number of tasks computed.

Thanks to those who are able to implement such improvements.

I agree with you galbezalel.

Users are unwilling to set or adjust schedules, but there are times when "I have X hours that I wont spend on the computer since I'm going for lunch/nap/other tasks".
Compare it to real life, you decide to perform an hour of workout (from the current time). Same setting in Boinc would translate to: "Go ahead, let computer do heavy work for X hours".

Thank you, I'm glad this proposal resonated with you.

I wish a BOINC official would comment here as well, whether they are taking it into consideration or have a justified reason not to.

I've been looking through the Client API's to see if I could develop an applet-thingy myself (I'm a beginner-level coder), but sadly I am not proficient in C++, and it seems like the Python framework is designed only for Linux.

There aren't any BOINC officials (here), it's all community driven. But the best place to place feature requests is at GitHub. https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/issues
Do search through the open issues if there's nothing likewise already asked, as else your feature will just be locked.

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