Show HN: OwnTime – a chess clock for your day's priorities | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: OwnTime – a chess clock for your day's priorities

owntime.app

118 pointsfmos67 comments

I made OwnTime to balance between competing priorities in my life. The idea is based on two main influences: the concept of "roles" from "The 5 Choices" (2015), and my repeated failure to effectively implement time blocking due to the necessary flexibility in my role.

The app allows you to define time budgets, which are not much more than a few mutually exclusive countdown timers. The UX is essentially that of a chess clock for an arbitrary number of players with configurable time.

The whole point of the app is to kick you out of the running role/priority when its time is up. One feature that was essential for me was AlarmKit alarms, which only became possible last year (>= iOS 26.1). Another was watchOS support, as a natural surface for time-related matters.

The current version is strictly focussed. The timers track time allocation during one day. All timers are reset at midnight. I didn't build any statistics - you can export the raw internal SQLite store and make any evaluation or dashboard you want from there.

I don't plan to extend the app nor to convert it into a service. All data stays local on your devices (synced between phone and watch locally) and fully open to you. No need for an account or subscription. Thus, I ask for a small one-time fee of $1.99.

The website has a short video and rendered preview: https://owntime.app

If you want to go straight to the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6770125662

I look forward to your comments and feedback.

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This is a great (and tight) execution of a neat concept. I'm not in the garden of Apple so unfortunately I can't play with it, but the preview is thorough. I particularly like the voice integration. I sympathise with some of the time allocation issues you mention, particularly when it comes to important but not urgent things.

Relatedly - I've struggled a lot in the last year with time tracking for fixed price projects (not so important, but useful) and billable hours (very important) largely due to the amount of parallelism I now do; and I think this notion of a "chess clock" may unblock me on building my own tracker for this!

Thank you for your kind feedback!

Yes, I'd feel honored if the concept gained traction.

This is great and NOT another pomodoro and I gladly paid £2 for this piece of software which I COULD throw at Fable and probably get something similar but honestly can't be arsed and just want the app.

That's the attitude. :-) Thank you!

Btw, good luck with Fable working with Watch Connectivity and AlarmKit. I mean, it does try hard. ;-)

OP here. I just released version 1.2 which is based on the feedback in this thread. It brings better scaling of fonts and the chart, which leads to better support for smaller devices. Also included are fixes to the widget and live activity renderings (one of which is a workaround of a confirmed iOS bug). Finally, the redundant “live” pill is dropped. Enjoy the update!

Very nice, I will buy it. I am also searching a special feature which add recurring alarms like every 45 minutes (for remembering to get up from my desk).

Can you add a feature like that or point me to a similar app?

Thank you! I appreciate it!

Yes, some type of regular notification similar to the one-time wrap-up notification is something I would definetely consider. This overlaps with the Pomodoro-type of apps, which is why it wasn't top priority for me so far.

https://www.dejal.com/timeout/ does this with a lot of flexibility.

I make my screen fade when I’ve worked for 90 min, with a call to action to take a quick walk. Also, every 20 minutes to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

Very nice, I like your approach and design.

Counting up would be preferred for me on some tasks. Sometimes the timesheet approach is needed, it'd be great if you could support both.

Could you explain your use case? When do you prefer counting up over counting down and why?

You could set up a priority with the minimum budget (15m) and log everything as "over work". Of course, that will lack visibility in the chart.

I need something like this, but haven't been able to find anything. I'm mildly ASD and having time boxed todo items in an easy "this is what you need to do next, tick it off when it's done" way is basically the only thing that works for my brain. Many years ago I used to have a macOS menubar app that let you arrange your tasks on a timeline of the day, it was magnificent.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I kept OwnTime strictly separate from todos. There are so many great apps for that. I would consider linking priorities into external todo apps, e.g. if it would be possible to deep link into a certain group of todos in the app of your choice. So you could go OwnTime -> priority -> switch to todos associated with that priority.

Really nice looking app. I like the ambiguity of the name.

Was initially confused as to what the total of the ring was — took me a moment to realise it's 100% of the time allocated, not the whole day or the workday. I'd probably want to always allocate 24 hours of tasks (including sleep and downtime) just to get a 24 hour ring.

Yay, someone mentioned the name. As a non-native speaker, I wasn't sure whether the ambiguity really works - glad to hear it does, at least for one other person.

Actually, there is no limit on how much you allocate, even 25h works (yes, might be considered a bug). But that's not the idea. The app is meant to help balance things that pull you in and eat your time without you noticing against those that want you to come and get them actively and intentionally and would never call for you.

Edit: ... and those things usually sum up to much less than 24h, because sleep is in neither category (at least for me); I mean, it does pull you in, but it also lets you go when it's time. :-)

I don’t understand what the timers labeled “still yours” mean in the sample images. Is that just a user label or some sort of special category for eg uncategorized time?

I also don’t understand what the different colored parts of the ring represent.

Thank you for your questions!

"Still yours" shows the total time available over all priorities.

The different ring segments represent the time allocated (available=light and used=dark) of each priority in the color you assigned to that priorty.

This looks great! However, I would love it if you added support for macOS (and iPadOS) as well. Is this such a large request? I will definitely purchase once macOS support is built in.

Thank you for taking the time and posting this. This is not an extremely improbable direction. I will consider it.

I’ve been looking for ages for a good timekeeping/organizing app.

This looks really nice. Definitely giving it a try now. I will come back with feedback and suggestions

Thank you for giving it a try! I look forward to your impressions and ideas.

I'm a little confused the you and me in “Alarms you when this budget runs out” and "Also cue me to wrap up time",

There are two types of notification: 1) When budget runs out (available time goes to zero), there is always an alarm, like for the typical system timer. 2) Optionally, you can enable a notification to nudge you slightly ealier, e.g. 10 minutes. This allows you to prepare to wrap up what you are doing so you can actually stop (e.g. in a "close the lid" sense) when time is up.

Just bought it. Is there a day of week feature or "weekend mode" planned?

Thank you!

There is no such feature currently. The way I use it is that I simply ignore it on weekends.

What behaviour would you expect from a weekend mode?

For me the same feature set is fine, it's just a different breakdown of time.

On weekdays I have configured 8 hours of work (that I might still subdivide later). On weekends I would like to replace that block with "Chores" and "Nap" :)

Makes sense, thank you for taking the time to describe it. I will consider adding something that covers this need.

I like the way the alarms app lets you specify exactly which days of the week a repeating alarm applies to.

This sounds very useful to me, unfortunately i don't own an iPhone.

Thank you for your feedback anyway - I hope, someone else picks it up!

The "What makes it different" feels so AI-generated :(

Thanks for taking the time to point out the impression. I have rewritten it more casually.

Color scheme and typography also scream Claude. But nice idea.

Thanks!

I hear you. Not in love with those particular colors either. I need (a) 5 light + 5 dark colors (b) that are pairwise discernible when next to each other and (c) don't get confused immediately with Apple's Activity rings. That last (c) unfortunately rules out many popular open/free color schemes from charting libraries I know.

I'm no expert on colors (nor typography), so will gladly take input from anyone more proficient than me.

I’d just use the system color palette. I would be surprised if users confuse your design with Activity.

The “Live” label looks like a Claudism. For the rest, you should be fine when you use the semantic fonts + size presets provided by Apple. They also set decent values for tracking depending on size and will react to global a11y size settings.

I will definitely look into these improvements, especially the fonts and the "live" badge. For the colors, I'm unsure; I played around a lot with those already and quite used to them by now, but who knows. Thank you for your detailed feedback and the specific suggestions!

Fonts and scaling are fixed with 1.2 released now. Live badge is gone too. I didn’t touch the colours for now.

Would it be possible to self-hosted for web app ?

There is no web app I'm afraid.

If you wait until tomorrow, someone will have sloppy-copied this and posted here, I am sure of it.

I like the idea. The alarm helps the transition.

Thank you! Yes, the alarm was the single most important requirement for me.

Nice concept and good execution

Thank you, glad you like it.

I hope you consider bringing this to Android.

Unfortunately, I have no such plans and no OwnTime for that ;)

I guess, if there is interest, it will be possible to use the website as a guidance for whoever or whatever may implement an Android version. I’d feel honored.

If you don't mind posting a video tour of the app, I would work on it.

I don't mind at all. The video already on the website shows the main screen with interactions over time. The only other screen (except for the basic info screen with links) is the "edit" dialog on the second static screenshot below. The "add" dialog is the same view with a different header. If you tell me what else you'd need, I will see what I can do.

The video, is it there still? I don't see it on your website.

Yes, it’s the first big image below the intro text on the website. You may need to wait a moment for it to auto-play. It is a self-served video file, no YT embed.

Thank you. Strange, I'm not seeing any video under the first main text or anywhere on the website. After the main text I see "On your iPhone" with 2 screenshots immediately below and then 1 underneath those. Then the rest, but no video.

Yeah, it seems sufficient. I'll mail you if I need anything more!

Great, yes, feel free.

I just noticed that one screen is missing on the website: the one for logging a past session (positive, when you forgot to start the timer, and negative when you forgot to stop it). I’ll add that tonight on the website.

if I understand correctly, the time set are not extendable no?

Preset color themes would be nice to have :)

Thank you for your interest. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by time set.

You can add as many priorities as you want.

You can do and track "over work" as well. It is displayed as negative budget, but not indicated in the chart.

That's a nice side project, however pomodoro timers are a dime a dozen

Thank you.

I know, and I didn't need a Pomodoro timer.

What Pomodoro doesn't show you and is at the heart of this app: the things you neglect, front and center, not in the shape of todos (and bad feelings) but it the shape of your personal priorities.

Sorry, I don't get it? I am curious though

A very handy tool

Thank you, I appreciate your feedback.

good product. Also for Android?

Thank you!

Android: not yet, and not from me. But stay tuned; given the interest this saw today, I hope someone with Android skills (that I'm lacking) will jump in.

Claude can do it within hours? give your iOS code, and ask "hey, make an Android app for this iOS app". in 2026, you don't need an Android engineer, but $100 for Claude Code.

The app is made in Swift and relies heavily on Watch Connectivity and AlarmKit (among others when you take the widgets and Live Activity into account, which may be omitted). I assume, none of those maps obviously to Android SDKs.

And in my experience, Claude's first results are fine for a preview, but less so for a reliable product. You can get there, but only if you can follow or even guide the engineering and make the right decisions and tradeoffs along the way. I would definitely need to learn Android to work with Claude.

Don't get me wrong, but I can't allocate that time atm. And I don't think I'm the best person to do it.

Theoretically, Apple says you can now (or will be able to) write Android apps in Swift.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1ogjkq7/developers_c...

That sounds interesting and worth a look. Although my experience with such cross platform bindings is that they tend to be leaky especially around system-dependent things like alarms and connectivity. But I’ll give it a try when I have a few hours to spend.

could we also have a macOS app?

Thanks for asking! I do agree that would be useful, but haven't looked into how sync could possibly work while keeping my claims and principles of "fully local" up. I will definitely look into it.

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