Show HN: A minimalist Mac app that helps track, allocate, and plan your time

[reaperducer]

I'm not in the market for this kind of app, but thank you for making it a straight $9.99 purchase, instead of a $4.99/month SaaS (rental) scheme. Or some bogus in-app purchase that gets negated somewhere along the way when the app auto-updates and the previous in-app purchase is no longer available.

I can't tell if it syncs data with my other Apple devices, but if it does, it would be great if it had the option of doing it through iCloud instead of through some proprietary untrusted service that I have to create yet another account for. (I' looking at you, Panic and Junecloud.)

[jpulgarin]

Thanks! We considered a subscription service with some added features but decided instead to focus on simplicity. Right now there is no syncing, but we will definitely consider using iCloud if we implement it in the future (and once it's back up).

[flaque]

I would much rather pay for a product over time.

When you pay upfront, the dev is not incentivized to try and keep you. So the product gets worse and worse until it dies.

If you pay overtime, the whole game is “how can we make this person love the shit out of this thing for as long as possible.”

[dejaime]

If that is a problem, I'd rather have it sync with something like nextcloud instead of just another flavor of untrusted proprietary service.

[jkmcf]

My observation is that most monthly services are priced per year as a single purchase. To me it would make more sense to average that over 2 years. The big problem I see is people constantly clamoring for more, and non-converging, features, but only want to pay once.

If I ever get around to releasing one of the various projects I have, it will probably use a tip jar.

[oiasdjfoiasd]

It depends. If it's a piece of software that never updates, a one time purchase makes sense.

But otherwise, why should you get access to all future updates and ongoing work?

I think Sketch has a good system - you pay once and you only have access to that version forever (bugs and all). In order to update/get new features, you need to pay again or have an ongoing subscription.

[jpulgarin]

Hey HN! My name is Julian, and I made Effortless with aracena to solve a problem we were both having: how to focus on exactly one thing at a time. Effortless displays my current task, and a countdown timer in the menu bar, and although it sounds silly, it means that I have a constant visual reminder of what I should be working on. Effortless was also a great excuse to learn Swift and native Mac app development. I'm happy to answer any questions about the app or the development process, although it's my birthday so I might be a little slow to respond. If you have any feedback or want a trial code to test Effortless out feel free to write me at [email protected] . Thanks!

[nihonde]

There’s a word missing in the text of one of the screenshots in the App Store. (I’m in the Japan App Store, if that matters.)

“...are you done your task?”

Also, notifications is spelled incorrectly. Those kinds of mistakes indicate a lack of attention to detail.

[aportnoy]

Fantastic app, thank you for posting! Is there a way to get the current task name to show in full length in the menu bar, similar to what you have in the video? I see a truncated name instead (i.e. instead of "do task number bajillion 30:00" I see "do task num... 30:00").

[snazz]

Specific question: are the keyboard shortcuts accessible from anywhere? If so, using them would mean I couldn’t close a browser tab or reload a page, because it would be forwarded to Effortless instead, right?

[karanbhangui]

Does your app support iCloud sync or is everything stored locally? Are there any plans for an iOS app?

[tedmiston]

Looks interesting. Any plans to offer a trial outside of the MAS?

[Fnoord]

Could you consider synchronization via Nextcloud?

[xwkd]

This feels less like a "Show HN" and more like an advertisement.

[duiker101]

I mean... aren't all Show HN sort of adverts? How is this different?

[tobr]

This looks brilliant in its simplicity. I’ve been using Tyke.app for a few weeks as a task list, and it’s perhaps the first that seems to work for me. Getting timers + fast task entry seems like a useful addition. Bought it, the price is perfect.

Some feedback. Starting the task automatically when it’s added feels stressful. Same when I restart the app - it starts ticking. Not sure how to reset it either.

Would like to be able to add tasks without specifying a time too, and switch to it without having a timer start - just as a reminder of what to focus on.

Can I turn off the active task somehow, and show the icon again? (i.e. have access to the list from the menu, without explicitly selecting which one I’m working on atm)

[jpulgarin]

Thanks a lot. We focused a lot on simplicity so I'm glad that shines through.

Your feedback is super useful to us. The ability to turn off the active task is probably something we will incorporate in the next release. Having the ability to add tasks without a timer needs to be thought through a bit more by us since many users use their Effortless task list as a sort of notepad. Please let me know if you have any more feedback!

[YCuN4M00v33odS]

13.99 to show notifications from a list.

Come on

[therockhead]

If it helps some folks focus on tasks, it worth a lot more than a few dollars.

[duiker101]

It's worth what people are willing to pay. Seems like there's quite a few people here happy with the price.

[pizza]

You’d probably have an opportunity cost of more than that to recreate it, though.

[modzu]

it's the prototypical app to build after "hello world"

[kendallpark]

Many years back, a coworker and I were talking about how we wished pomodoro apps had a "snooze" button. One of the limitations of using the pomodoro technique with programming is that it can break you out of flow.

I wonder if there would be a way to pair this with an app like Cold Turkey...

[hu3]

Is there a blog post about development process or technologies used?

[jpulgarin]

No blog post yet but I'm happy to answer any specific questions here. Effortless is a fairly simple app although there were some tricky edge cases to handle like when the task name is too long for the menu bar (especially when dealing with multiple monitors), and how to update the current task in the menu bar when making large edits to the task list. Making the app simple to use and cutting down the list of features to the bare essentials was also a process that involved a lot of iterations and talking with early users.

I learned Swift and native Mac app development in order to develop Effortless and have since fallen in love with Swift. It has replaced Python as my language of choice for many tasks.

[rusinov]

Mac nerds wouldn’t install an app with icon like this.

[paultopia]

Oh man, that's sad but true. I've been working on a couple of small (hopefully) useful Mac apps myself, but can't draw or anything like that, and this fact has seriously kept me from putting them on the app store altogether.

[tedmiston]

Eh, if it's a menu bar app, no need to keep it in the Dock or ever see the icon.

[brandall10]

The concept is similar to an app I used years ago called Zonebox. I loved the idea but it was buggy and appeared to be abandoned by the developer.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zonebox/id597870795?mt=12

Purchased and so far it looks pretty great.

[jpulgarin]

Thanks! Let me know if you have any feedback.

[n1000]

Looks nice! I am a huge fan of https://noteplan.co. They do many things right such as using iCloud for syncing with iOS and markdown seems like a natural choice to me. What I am missing is just what you offer. A focused task with a pomodoro timer... Maybe you should work together?

[regnerba]

Looks nice and simple. I recently went looking for a ToDo list app and landed on TickTick. So far it has been really good. Specifically it is very focused on lists, not notes, has a global keyboard shortcut for adding new items, and just lots of nice little features to help make managing a bunch of lists easier.

[Dextro]

It would be pretty cool if there was a way to add tasks straight from Alfred

[jpulgarin]

There's a quick add functionality which allows you to add a task with a keyboard shortcut. Would Alfred integration still seem useful to you?

[simongr3dal]

A bit Off topic but, why does the mac app store open automatically, is there any way to turn that off?

No other kind of link in safari is allowed to open an app like that without confirming it each time.

[_underfl0w_]

I wonder how hard Apple has fuzzed that "feature"

[j-pb]

Would love that for iOs, or an iPad Os widget. <3 I'm actually sad I do all my dev stuff via blink.sh now :(

[aracena]

Hopefully, we will have it in the future

[binjo]

I used this for a while. I think the free version. Really loved using it. Great job

[matthewhartmans]

This is a neat app! Really simple and straight to the point. Fantastic job Julian!

[jpulgarin]

Thanks Matthew!

[z5h]

I've been wanting something like this. You have my $.

[aracena]

Thank you so much!!! It means a lot to us, if you have any feedback or any question please write me to [email protected]

[rvn1045]

can i look at stats? how much time ive spend working on various tasks and also the visualization of the time periods i have spent working?

[jpulgarin]

We're hoping to add analytics in a future update.

[kleer001]

Hmm, I could probably setup emacs to do something like this.

I'm on Linux these days so can't use it anyways :/

[adminu]

Well, that would be org-mode. If you set an time estimate [1] it will give you a desktop notifiction when your time is over. Thanks to clocking in and out [2] you can record your time. And, well, it's org-mode, you can do basically everything if your are willing to learn it ;)

And at the end of the day you can generate a nice table that shows you, how much time you spend with what.

[1] https://orgmode.org/manual/Effort-estimates.html [2] https://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-commands.html

[edejong]

Good (free) alternative, works across OSes and on iOS and Android, has browser integration and a support team:

Toggl.io

[tomcam]

Website is now a Godaddy parking page