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

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

apps.apple.com

191 pointsaracena104 comments

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.)

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).

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

Precisely. Not everyone who's using a Mac is using the entire Apple ecosystem. I use Macs, Android, and Linux, and I am not going to use any Windows/Linux/Mac-specific protocol.

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.

For a consumer subscription doesn’t really make sense if there’s no value added with the subscription. Also, such small app as this having a subscription would just be straight up insulting.

Of course it is better for the dev to sell a subscription, but having to pay when new versions releases is for the customer the best option.

The software purchase model has worked for years and had made many companies very very rich.

Hint: you can charge for upgrades without forcing them down your users throats.

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

Because a norm has been established in software where you can charge for what in physical goods would be considered a defective piece of shit that should be recalled asap. This is beneficial to software developers and is predicated upon the concept of free updates.

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.

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.”

I’ll pay for version 1. If version 2 is good I’ll pay for that. If not I own version 1 and will keep using it.

> how can we make this person love the shit out of this thing for as long as possible

"I know! Let's add every feature and bullet point under the sun!"

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

This is not true.

When you pay up front, the developer has an incentive to make the product right the first time; instead of releasing a buggy product because it can always be patched later.

In the pay up front model, if the initial product is crap, then nobody buys the next version. That is the incentive to release a quality program the first time around.

Then the developer has an incentive to make the next version so much better that people who like the first product will buy the new version.

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.”

No, if you pay over time, the whole game is "how can we keep this sucker on the hook and milk him for monthly payments for bug fixes and things we should have done the first time."

For example, millions of people pay repeatedly for WordPerfect from version to version for decades because it just kept getting better. That's how it was done until very recently, even with operating systems.

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 julian@effortless.app . Thanks!

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").

The task name is truncated any time the app notices that the full name wouldn't fit in the space available in the menu bar. If new menu bar space becomes available I haven't yet found a way to get notified of that, so instead I try "expanding" it once every minute to see if it will fit. If after a minute of waiting you notice the task name still hasn't expanded please let me know as it's definitely a bug.

For those wondering how they can make more space available - https://www.macbartender.com/ is a good choice.

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

Right now everything is stored locally - we don't even have a server running. An iOS app is definitely something we're thinking about, although we want to focus on improving our current Mac app first. One of the main features in our roadmap is integration with Todoist so that you can pull in tasks from your Todoist list instead of retyping them.

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

We have no trial version to download right now unfortunately. If you want to try it out feel free to send me an email at julian@effortless.app and I can send you a promo code to download it for free from the app store.

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?

There is one global keyboard shortcut that is available everywhere, and that can be changed from the preferences window. You can change this shortcut to be something that doesn't conflict with any of your existing shortcuts. The other shortcuts only work once you've pressed the global shortcut. So for example, if your global shortcut is (the default) ⌘E, to open the task list you would press ⌘E and while still holding down command press F.

Could you consider synchronization via Nextcloud?

Will definitely look into it!

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.

Can confirm. I too noticed these through the Japan App Store.

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

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

It has a 10$ price tag.

And? It doesn't matter how simple it is, if it's FOSS or not. OP made something and they are showing it to HN. Let's not forget that HN is part of YC, who's sole purpose is to fund companies to make money, not charities.

I agree with your general point, but YC does accept non-profit orgs. https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/

You are right, I should have phrased it differently, thanks for highlighting this.

It links directly to the Mac App Store which open MAS on my Mac. It's kind of rude. Their web-page does not contain any text describing the product, there is a simple video which could be linked instead. The product is at least 1 year old, judging from comments in the App Store. Usually a Show HN thing is a bit fresher. I agree with OP, this feels less like a Show HN and more like "oh by the way, we should post a Show HN the buy button".

The general rule for Show HNs is that there has to be a way to try out the product or project. That means different things in different contexts, since e.g. hardware can't easily be "tried out", so we tend to adapt that rule some. But I think you're right that there should be more information with a software Show HN, even though it isn't a web app.

thank you for the information I didn't know that, We offered to many people who asked to try the app to write us to h@effortless.app and we will give it to them. Hopefully next time we will do a better show HN thank you

Well, that's probably enough if you're willing to follow through on such requests quickly. I'll restore the title.

Thank you so much!!!!

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)

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!

Big fan of the auto start and countdown stuff you’re doing — there’s a lot of value in the “pomodoro method” which this could approach or help automate.

It’s not for everyone, but the idea is to trigger a kind of competitiveness/relentlessness with your todos that helps focus and flow.

One more thing - maybe I’m imagining this but I wonder if you might have a bug that causes the alert sound to go off sometimes even when the tasks are paused? I’ve heard an occasional ping from two different computers since installing the app yesterday, and I can’t figure out what else would be causing the sound.

I know what you mean, the idea is that if you pause the the task it will remind you every 5 mins to resume the task. Basicly you have to compleat the task or remove it. if this becomes a problem write me to h@effortless.co and we will find a way to improve it

Huh. That’s not at all clear, and strikes me as weird. I think you’d have to pair it with some visual indication...

Thanks for the feedback - I can definitely understand it not being intuitive. If you want to remove the alert for now you can do so from the preferences window (it's the "Mute get back to work alert" option).

13.99 to show notifications from a list.

Come on

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

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

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

I feel like if you really believed in this, having an egg timer might be better: existing solution, not bound to the computer, etc. The key addition is the label, I guess. I actually do use an egg timer when I need to

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

The app had a ranking of 50 in the productivity category June 8 and was out of the MAS US list June 11. Thats all for the last 365 days. So I guess not many is willing to pay. I salute the attempt fight the race to the bottom which the App Store has become, but I agree with OP, this app is probably not the standard-bearer. 9.99 for a TODO list (and judging from the video not very good) is too much. I mean, iStat Menus is 9.99 although amputated on the MAS.

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...

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

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.

I for one would love to hear more about your transition as someone who’s been with Python for a while now but struggling to make Swift stick (last attempt was with SwiftUI, which is awesome but very young).

Definitely! I got lucky in the sense that wanting to create Effortless forced me to learn Swift. I wanted much more control than something like Electron or BitBar could give me, and I wanted to make this app a reality. I had also been working professionally with Python for the last few years, and the codebase at my previous company was so large that I started to miss working in a statically typed language.

I didn't do anything that special to learn it. I gave the The Swift Programming Language book (1) a read and then started to get my hands dirty, using Google when needed. I had done some iOS development a long time ago, which also helped. I almost immediately found it just as easy to write as Python (and in some respects easier) but with a stronger type system. It also has a lot of great tooling like Playgrounds. So I guess my advice would be to give yourself a project which you want to use Swift for, ideally where you have no other alternatives. I've also tinkered around with using Vapor to create web servers using Swift, so that might be another option.

1. https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/

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

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.

While I feel for you not feeling able to publish, is it really that sad that we like good icons? Isn’t one of the important things about the platform that we have high ui demands?

I'd argue that UI is different from prettiness of icon. The skill of drawing and the skill of understanding how to make an application easy to use are different.

While true, this icon has some obvious flaws that could have been fixed with "draw polygon; sides: 3" in any free or premium editor.

We are affected by aesthetics. Humans like things that look good, use those objects more, find the objects easier to use, has a lower cognitive load on us, etc. Atleast that is the results of the cognitive studies I know of (like those 1990s studies from Hitatchi).

I agree with you, I decided to keep it simple (may be too simple lol) so we could ship as fast as possible but I will work on that in the future, thank you for your feedback!

You can have someone design an icon for you on fiverr for a pretty reasonable price.

Good Idea, I will try that

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

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.

Thanks! Let me know if you have any feedback.

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?

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.

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

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?

I usually forget my shortcuts and rely heavily in tools like alfred (or the Jetbrains find action shortcut). It reduces the amount of shortcuts I need to remember. It also reduces the likelihood of shortcuts conflicting if I only need a couple of them :)

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.

I wonder how hard Apple has fuzzed that "feature"

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 :(

Hopefully, we will have it in the future

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

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

Thanks Matthew!

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

Thank you so much!!! It means a lot to us, if you have any feedback or any question please write me to h@effortless.app

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?

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

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

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

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

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

Toggl.io

Website is now a Godaddy parking page

Looks like they got https://toggl.com

This isn’t the same service at all, BTW. I use and like Toggl but the app shown here serves a different purpose.

I like the idea, OP. I might give it a try when I’m on my Mac.

iOS version planned? I'd love to chip in.

It's definitely something we're thinking about. There have been many times when I'm not at my computer that I'd wished I had access to my task list, or had something like Effortless on my phone to keep me focused on some manual task. Right now we're focused on improving the Mac version though as an iOS version would also require us to write a backend to handle accounts/syncing, etc...

I would use an iOS app. I like to keep my Mac as clutter free as possible/very minimal.

Happy Birthday.

"or are you done your task"

Hey thank you the feedback, can you please let me where did you see the error? thank you

Notification in the last screenshot on the app store page.

I'm fixing it now, thank you!

Also “notification” was spelt incorrectly on that screenshot too

Thank you so much I'm fixing that as well

No Linux or Windows version?

Not yet, sorry, but hopefully in the future

Counterpoint: These apps never work, calendars are time prisons, we already have advanced technology for managing time: our brains.

Despite the downvotes, I somewhat agree with you: It is not about the app you use, but THAT YOU USE IT. It does take some commitment and I think, people tend to hop from app to app instead of building the nessecary mindset. In fact, a clock and a peace of paper can do the job just fine, if yout want it to.

and a pencil to right on the peace of paper with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com