Show HN: Time Cop – A simple, private, open-source time tracking app

[hamaluik]

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.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629

[nileshtrivedi]

> 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.

Not yet ready for prime-time so PRs are welcome: https://github.com/nileshtrivedi/family

[rendall]

Awesome! 0.79€ is a steal. Purchased!

[uoaei]

Looks great and I'd love to try it.

Does it record also the times that the timers are started / stopped, or only the duration of time that the timers are on?

[PTOB]

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.

[1] https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

[hamaluik]

Awesome to hear! scrcpy looks really cool, it Kinda makes me wish I still used an Android on the regular.

[justkez]

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.

[1]: https://tim.neat.software/

[hamaluik]

Looks great! I don’t use a Mac unfortunately though

[screamingninja]

Would you consider sharing the app on f-droid for those trying to stay off of the Google ecosystem?

https://f-droid.org/

[hamaluik]

Sure! Will look at that this evening when I get some time. Thanks for the suggestion!

[trulyrandom]

Anyone can submit new apps to F-Droid, the author of the app does not need to be involved.

[programmarchy]

It's refreshing to see the $0.99 app deal again. No subscription nonsense.

For time tracking, the best method I've found so far is just to use the Calendar app. I have a different calendar for each task type (meeting, development, project management, etc.) I put in the person or client/project in the event title, and use the notes field for details. It's quick and easy to edit time blocks by creating a new event and resizing it as needed. Visualization of how I'm spending my time in the weekly or monthly views is intuitive. Automatically syncs with all my devices.

No timers though, although admittedly I frequently forget to stop those anyway.

[eftokay83]

Just wanted to let you know that Google Translate is really funny sometimes.

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".

[hamaluik]

Thanks, I'll fix that right away!

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.

[wingerlang]

Yea I would not even bother with automatic translations.

[throwaway55554]

Wow! Look at the features! Such a breath of fresh air.

Summary:

> Offline only

> Export to .csv

> Fully private

> Full access to the db

Nicely done!

[hamaluik]

Thanks!

[2data222]

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.

[hamaluik]

Thanks! I need it for work, but since getting my wife to beta test it she has also used it to somewhat similarly to pretty good success.

[rsanek]

>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.

[facebiff]

Nice work! FYI, there is a ruby testing library with the same name that's somewhat well-known (~3K stars on github) https://github.com/travisjeffery/timecop

[hiaux0]

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)

[hamaluik]

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.

[_hhkc]

A Siri Shortcut would be great!

[kmtrowbr]

I have used OfficeTime https://www.officetime.net/ for the past 10 years. I use the OSX version. You can sync between multiple clients on different devices, but I don't use this. For me, it's just a very simple, lightweight client app which keeps track of time and has basic reporting and invoicing functionality. I really like it. It is paid though but, it's a one time fee for years and years of use, if that makes sense.

[fenwick67]

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.

[hamaluik]

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!

[fluidcruft]

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.

[hamaluik]

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.

[qwertygerty]

Awesome! Except, how do I trial run it before buying? (without having to checkout code and running an emulator...)

[hamaluik]

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!

[chli]

I think that feature is built in the Android Play store. From what I understand you can get a refund if you don't like the app.

[maelito]

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.

[the_pwner224]

http://www.workrave.org/

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.

[segmondy]

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

[brobinson]

Isn't this basically the Pomodoro Technique? There's a ton of apps/programs that implement this.

[Summershard]

On Windows I recommend Baralga. It's quite old, UI is simple, and it just works. It's still maintained.

https://github.com/Baralga/baralga

[nakovet]

Thank you! Bought it because of many reasons: cheap, simple, fits my use case. I like the Pomodoro Technique a lot, if possible would you add countdowns or something, for example: * 25 minutes (countdown) - researching analytics SaaS

[rkagerer]

It's a sad world where this is worthy of being your top feature:

...there is no tracking / spying / advertising / etc

Thanks for contributing to make the world a little less sad!

[hamaluik]

I agree and thanks!

[xerxesaa]

I also did a little project for this: https://workfission.com