I was recently inspired by a post on HN: “An app can be a home-cooked meal” [1] and decided I was finally done putting up with time tracking apps that didn't suit my own use case well enough.
I hate time-tracking, but it is a requirement of my job (grants that help pay for my job, really) and if I don't have an app handy, I tend to forget to record my time. I've tried numerous time-tracking apps on the app stores, but they've each fallen short for me in some way or another—many are too complicated, or don't _just work_, or cost more than I think is reasonable. Many necessitate sending data over the network for multi-device sync—a feature I have no need of, but can never disable.
Since time tracking is fairly simple, I decided to write my own app to scratch my own itch. I also decided to publish the app and use it as a learning experience—I've worked on parts of mobile apps before, and developed proof-of-concept mobile apps before, but I wanted to follow the process through from start to end. I also decided to localize it (using Google Translate) for the experience of doing so. My biggest take away from all of this is that the work required to create and manage a store presence (localization and especially localized screenshots) is almost an order of magnitude more work than programming the damned thing in the first place.
In any event, this is an app I made for myself. But if you want to use it or fork it for your own purposes, please do.
> I decided to write my own app to scratch my own itch. I also decided to publish the app and use it as a learning experience.
Strongly agree with this. I was fed up with all the messaging apps that compromise on security and privacy, so started building one just to be used within a family. Using this as a chance to learn Flutter and making it open-source with end-to-end encryption.
I had a quick look and found it interesting. Do you have any writeup (on GitHub or elsewhere) on how people connect with each other (since phone numbers aren't used as identifiers) and also how the end-to-end encryption (mainly key exchange) works?
The first member would create a group, and others can join that group by scanning a QR code. Strictly wanted to avoid any PII such as phone numbers. Need ideas on how to handle things like removing a person from a group (i.e. resetting the shared private key).
For encryption, the idea was to keep things simple and have the QR code be the private key so that it's never transmitted. But another option is to use Matrix.org's E2E protocol which is a lot more work and requires a server.
Knowing some French I know that the translations can be a bit.. special sometimes. For this app all I can hope for is than in most cases the poor translations are better than no translations.
Translating the app was more an exercise in figuring out the technical and marketing details for translating an app. Hopefully the translations are entirely unusable at least.
The app is built with Flutter [1], which uses Material design by default. So it's cross-platform, but uses an Android design system. I briefly experimented with making it look more native on iOS, but although Flutter is capable of that in theory, it was a giant pain in the butt in practice and not worth it to me for this app.
How did you like Flutter for this? I've been playing with it some, and overall I like it a lot. I think they've made a bunch of smart choices, and the developer experience is great. But library support ended up being a huge problem for what I was trying to build. E.g., the official Flutter webview [1] is still marked as "Developers Preview" and says "it is not recommended to rely on webview keyboard in production apps". And I was also very disappointed with the mapping library support.
I mostly really like Flutter. I haven't done a huge amount of UI development work in my life, but of the things I have used, I have found Flutter to be far and away the easiest to quickly express the UI you want to build and just build it.
I think its killer features are the cross-platform support by default and the hot-reload—I found the hot-reload functionality so invaluable that I ended up jerry-rigging hot-reload into my current product at work.
You're right that it is definitely still rough in some places though. The libraries on pub.dev can be very hit-or-miss, and I definitely wasted some time trying various libraries from there before either giving up or rolling my functionality.
I too explored a mapping project using it a year or two ago now and ended up having to essentially create my own map view using mapbox APIs (unfortunately I don't have code that I can share from that project). That said, I find Flutter is at least relatively easy enough to implement things that you can't find from the ecosystem.
Thanks! And uhh.. you can't really, sorry. I didn't really think of that before submitting. Part of the learning process was to create a paid app and learn about the forms and processes required by Apple and Google to sell paid apps.
If you would like a promo code, let me know and I'll set you up!
Just bought it with Google Play credit to give it a spin. I don't have to record my time for work. I'm interested in it for personal accountability. I see it as making yourself step on the scale if you're trying to lose weight.
I have been working on doing something similar automatically using a PIR occupancy sensor on an ESP32, since I can never remember to clock in or out at home. It's mostly working.
Cool! Unfortunately I need to track things more granularly than “at home / at work / at desk / etc” otherwise something like your solution would be so much better because of the automation!
WakaTime is awesome, assuming you only need to keep track of how how long you're working on code.
Shameless plug follows:
timelyapp.com is similar to WakaTime, except it keeps track of _all_ the programs you use on the desktop, and for how long (MacOS/Windows only). Timely also tracks when you leave/arrive at work/home/other locations (GPS, requires mobile app). We can't claim offline mode, but all tracked "memories" are 100% your-eyes-only.
Timely is a time tracker specifically built for people who are bad at remembering what they worked on/don't log hours frequently. Sice Timely's "memories" are recorded to-the-minute, you can easily log accurate timesheets, even if you only do so once a month.
Manual export. That was one of those features that I considered, but don't really need for my use-case so ended up cutting it. I may add support for that in the future if I have time, but it's not on any roadmap or anything right now.
There are in the “reports” view and the CSV export, but not for the main “dashboard” / list of timers. That's something that I could add fairly easily however, so I probably will. Thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks! Only snag so far is I logged a test thing and I can't figure out how to delete it. I also have to do a lot of task switching, so it would be nice to select an existing log (like one I was working on 15 min ago) and copy it or restart it. I figured out that I can have multiple running timers but they all run continuously.
You can do those things! You just need to be a magic mind-reader and somehow know that you can swipe items left or right to either delete them or start (copy) them. Swipe a timer to the right to show a “delete” button, swipe to the left to show a “start / copy” button.
Once I can figure out how to make one of those step-by-step walk-through tutorials I'll definitely add that to the app, because that functionality has absolutely 0 discoverability.
On the desktop side, I'd recommend Tim[1] to anyone looking for a similarly-simple, hassle free time tracking app ($2.99 on Mac app store). My only gripe is you can't archive old tasks so the menu gets a little overwhelming.
Heh, yea.. my wife informed me of the movie after I had already bought a domain name and posted the first version online. Hopefully a time-tracking app is different enough from time-travel crime to not cause issues!
Yes, it's mobile only. It does not track what you're doing on your phone—you tell it what you're doing and it keeps track of it.
I use it at work for recording when I'm in meetings, when I'm actively developing, when I've researching, etc—things that I need to report but don't want to manually write down and things that aren't captured by things like screentime. I always have my phone with me and handy, whereas I don't always have my computer with my nor handy.
This is just what I've been looking for, and you beat me to scratching that itch. My job requires granular time tracking, but I've got to be able to do it at my desk and away from the office. As an Android user I can combine this with scrcpy[1] to take advantage of my fast desktop keyboard when I'm sitting down.
This comes right on time!
I was looking for some tracking apps yesterday, but wasn't satisfied with any of the choices.
I went for an Apple Shortcut instead `speedy time tracker`.
However, I will switch to yours to show support!
It would definitely be nice to add shortcut capabilities in the future :)
-------
My Feedback:
- Starting/Stopping timers should happen on press of list item
- Editing should happen on swipe left (essentially swapping start and edit)
- Running times could be indicated in the list itself, no need for separate section "Running Timers"
- If, I want to resume, eg. Work, a dropdown appears, eventually leading to Work (total time)> Work (time1), Work (time2), which makes it hard to resume (Now I have to open the list)
Thanks! A shortcut is a good idea, I’ll look into that.
I’ll play around with your other suggestions but not sure if I’ll keep them (but thank you for them!). I had fiddled with how things worked and settled on where it is now because it felt the most intuitive to myself. For example when I had the running timers in the main list itself I found it easy to forget that I had a timer running. Grouping all running timers in one spot helped cut that down without too much fuss otherwise.
I'm looking for an equivalent of Stretchly for Android.
The goal of Stretchly is not to put a timer on your tasks, but simply to remind you that you shouldn't stay more than 20 minutes looking at your monitor without going to walk, stretch, look far through your window, etc.
You can do that with a script, here's mine. It reminds me every 15 minutes. It speaks it via speaker, then captures it and logs it and time.
#/bin/bash
while sleep 900; do
DATE=`date`
echo "Hello, what are you doing?" | espeak
DOING=`zenity -entry --text="what are you doing?"`
echo $DATE, $DOING >> ~/data/doing.txt
done
Configurable time limits for micro/normal breaks, and a daily limit. Flashes a popup when nearing the limit, then blanks your screen and starts the break timer. Option to postpone the break a limited number of times, or skip the break. Tracks your postpone/skip history and overall usage history so you can be disappointed in yourself for skipping breaks too often. Auto-detects when you have been away from the computer and counts that as break time.
>Associate timers with projects to group your work (or don’t)
Perhaps it's because I'm so used to seeing marketing materials that always present features in a way that assumes you'll use them, but the "(or don't)" here caused me to actually laugh out loud and made the "no tracking / spying / advertising / etc" comment above more believable. Well done.
96 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadI hate time-tracking, but it is a requirement of my job (grants that help pay for my job, really) and if I don't have an app handy, I tend to forget to record my time. I've tried numerous time-tracking apps on the app stores, but they've each fallen short for me in some way or another—many are too complicated, or don't _just work_, or cost more than I think is reasonable. Many necessitate sending data over the network for multi-device sync—a feature I have no need of, but can never disable.
Since time tracking is fairly simple, I decided to write my own app to scratch my own itch. I also decided to publish the app and use it as a learning experience—I've worked on parts of mobile apps before, and developed proof-of-concept mobile apps before, but I wanted to follow the process through from start to end. I also decided to localize it (using Google Translate) for the experience of doing so. My biggest take away from all of this is that the work required to create and manage a store presence (localization and especially localized screenshots) is almost an order of magnitude more work than programming the damned thing in the first place.
In any event, this is an app I made for myself. But if you want to use it or fork it for your own purposes, please do.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629
Strongly agree with this. I was fed up with all the messaging apps that compromise on security and privacy, so started building one just to be used within a family. Using this as a chance to learn Flutter and making it open-source with end-to-end encryption.
Not yet ready for prime-time so PRs are welcome: https://github.com/nileshtrivedi/family
For encryption, the idea was to keep things simple and have the QR code be the private key so that it's never transmitted. But another option is to use Matrix.org's E2E protocol which is a lot more work and requires a server.
Does it record also the times that the timers are started / stopped, or only the duration of time that the timers are on?
If you would like a promo code you can email me and I’ll get you sorted.
Summary:
> Offline only
> Export to .csv
> Fully private
> Full access to the db
Nicely done!
The /de/ page translates "fork away" with "weggabeln" which is really not what you meant (although it is really really funny).
A better translation would be "erstellen Sie Ihren eigenen Fork".
Knowing some French I know that the translations can be a bit.. special sometimes. For this app all I can hope for is than in most cases the poor translations are better than no translations.
"fork away" -> "Weggabelung" ... not much better :\",
[1] https://flutter.dev/
[1] https://pub.dev/packages/webview_flutter
I think its killer features are the cross-platform support by default and the hot-reload—I found the hot-reload functionality so invaluable that I ended up jerry-rigging hot-reload into my current product at work.
You're right that it is definitely still rough in some places though. The libraries on pub.dev can be very hit-or-miss, and I definitely wasted some time trying various libraries from there before either giving up or rolling my functionality.
I too explored a mapping project using it a year or two ago now and ended up having to essentially create my own map view using mapbox APIs (unfortunately I don't have code that I can share from that project). That said, I find Flutter is at least relatively easy enough to implement things that you can't find from the ecosystem.
Nice app and congrats on getting it live :)
If you would like a promo code, let me know and I'll set you up!
Shameless plug follows:
timelyapp.com is similar to WakaTime, except it keeps track of _all_ the programs you use on the desktop, and for how long (MacOS/Windows only). Timely also tracks when you leave/arrive at work/home/other locations (GPS, requires mobile app). We can't claim offline mode, but all tracked "memories" are 100% your-eyes-only.
Timely is a time tracker specifically built for people who are bad at remembering what they worked on/don't log hours frequently. Sice Timely's "memories" are recorded to-the-minute, you can easily log accurate timesheets, even if you only do so once a month.
(Disclaimer: I work on Timely)
Once I can figure out how to make one of those step-by-step walk-through tutorials I'll definitely add that to the app, because that functionality has absolutely 0 discoverability.
Thanks for the feedback!
[1]: https://tim.neat.software/
[1]: https://timekeeperapp.com
I use it at work for recording when I'm in meetings, when I'm actively developing, when I've researching, etc—things that I need to report but don't want to manually write down and things that aren't captured by things like screentime. I always have my phone with me and handy, whereas I don't always have my computer with my nor handy.
[1] https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
...there is no tracking / spying / advertising / etc
Thanks for contributing to make the world a little less sad!
I went for an Apple Shortcut instead `speedy time tracker`.
However, I will switch to yours to show support!
It would definitely be nice to add shortcut capabilities in the future :)
-------
My Feedback:
- Starting/Stopping timers should happen on press of list item
- Editing should happen on swipe left (essentially swapping start and edit)
- Running times could be indicated in the list itself, no need for separate section "Running Timers"
- If, I want to resume, eg. Work, a dropdown appears, eventually leading to Work (total time)> Work (time1), Work (time2), which makes it hard to resume (Now I have to open the list)
I’ll play around with your other suggestions but not sure if I’ll keep them (but thank you for them!). I had fiddled with how things worked and settled on where it is now because it felt the most intuitive to myself. For example when I had the running timers in the main list itself I found it easy to forget that I had a timer running. Grouping all running timers in one spot helped cut that down without too much fuss otherwise.
I figured you had iteration already, and it's how you prefer things, so no biggies :).
But also thanks for your insights on the running timer ux
The goal of Stretchly is not to put a timer on your tasks, but simply to remind you that you shouldn't stay more than 20 minutes looking at your monitor without going to walk, stretch, look far through your window, etc.
Works on Windows (XP or newer) and Linux. Free.
Configurable time limits for micro/normal breaks, and a daily limit. Flashes a popup when nearing the limit, then blanks your screen and starts the break timer. Option to postpone the break a limited number of times, or skip the break. Tracks your postpone/skip history and overall usage history so you can be disappointed in yourself for skipping breaks too often. Auto-detects when you have been away from the computer and counts that as break time.
https://f-droid.org/
Perhaps it's because I'm so used to seeing marketing materials that always present features in a way that assumes you'll use them, but the "(or don't)" here caused me to actually laugh out loud and made the "no tracking / spying / advertising / etc" comment above more believable. Well done.