Hit the Hay

Hit the Hay is a small software application designed specifically for helping you shut down, hibernate, or lock your computer, log off the current user, or turn off the monitor at a user-defined time.

Since this is a portable program, it is important to mention that it doesn’t leave any traces in the Windows Registry.

You can copy it on any USB flash drive or other devices, and take it with you whenever you need to schedule shutdown sessions on the breeze, without having to go through installation steps.

The user interface is clean and integrates only a few functions that you can play with. Everything is kept as simple and clear as possible, so tweaking the dedicated parameters proves to be an easy task.

Hit the Hay gives you the possibility to set up the timer by specifying the time in minutes and selecting the desired action that you want to trigger (e.g. hibernate, lock your computer, log off the current user). What’s more, the tool enables you to stop the current shutdown process with just one click. On the downside, it doesn't reveal a countdown timer letting you know how much time is left until the task is activated.

The lack of configurable settings can be good news for beginners, as they can learn to master the entire process with minimum effort. During our testing we have noticed that Hit the Hay carries out a task quickly. It doesn’t eat up a lot of CPU and memory, so the overall performance of the computer is not affected.

To sum things up, Hit the Hay proves to be a simplistic piece of software that allows you to schedule shutdown actions.