This Week's Sponsor:

Listen Later

Listen to Articles as Podcasts

Search results for "Timery"

Timery’s Updated Widgets Enable Starting and Stopping Timers, Pagination, and More

It’s interesting to compare Timery 1.6, Joe Hribar’s time tracking app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, with Widgetsmith. David Smith’s app uses interactivity across a wide range of different types of widgets, allowing for a highly personalized approach to your Home Screen. Timery is a little different. It’s just as customizable, if not more so, but in a deep, focused way that makes it hands-down the most customizable and useful way to track time from a widget.

If you had asked me how I used Timery in the spring, I would have said I primarily use the Mac app. That’s changed drastically over the summer. My answer now is that I’m primarily a Timery widget user.

What I love about the app’s widgets is that they allow you to create a set of widgets that work how you use the app and nothing more. One of Timery’s strengths has always been its rich set of features that make it valuable to a broad cross-section of users. However, that means there is more to Timery than most people need. But with the app’s widgets, it’s possible to pare the app down to just the components that are essential to you, which is the ultimate in customization.

That doesn’t mean you won’t use the main app ever again. Some people may, but I certainly haven’t. Instead, it’s been more of a focus shift that allows me to continue whatever I’m working on, switching timers as needed on the fly from whichever device I have handy at the moment without opening the app most of the time. Timery’s update is a stellar release, which also comes with a new watchOS app that fans of the app are going to love.

Read more

Timery 1.5 Update Released with Lock Screen Widgets, Live Activities, New Shortcuts Actions, and More

Timery has been updated with a long list of new features and improvements that fans of the app are going to love.

Lock Screen Widgets and Live Activities

Timery's new Lock Screen widgets.

Timery’s new Lock Screen widgets.

First off, Timery has added iOS 16 Lock Screen Widgets and Live Activities. The Lock Screen widgets can display your current time entry, the total amount of time tracked today, or start a new timer. Each widget type includes circular and rectangular variants when added beneath the Lock Screen’s time, as well as a narrow in-line version that can be added to the top of the screen. The widgets can be configured to start a specific saved timer or show a list of timers and optionally show the app’s edit view for tweaking the details of the timer you start. It’s worth noting that Timery’s editing view now supports ‘@’ as a way to quickly search and add projects and ‘#’ for adding tags.

Timery's Live Activities.

Timery’s Live Activities.

Live Activities display the current time entry on the iPhone 14 Pro line’s Dynamic Island and the Lock Screen. Long-pressing either reveals additional information about the current project, task, and total time tracked for the day.

I’m a big fan of Timery’s new widgets and Live Activities because they offer the sort of glanceable details that weren’t possible before unless you were using the Mac version of the app and enabled its menu bar app. Now, I don’t have to unlock my iPhone or iPad to check on a timer, which allows me to get the information I want without getting distracted by other things on either device.

Read more

Automating Podcast Sessions in Audio Hijack 4 with Shortcuts and Timery

Audio Hijack 4 and Timery.

Audio Hijack 4 and Timery.

For the past week, I’ve been rethinking my approach to time tracking with the Timery app with a focus on simplicity and automation. I appreciate the insights into my habits and patterns afforded by time tracking and Timery’s excellent Reports view, but lately I’ve felt like my setup with projects, tags, and sub-tasks was too convoluted since it was based on a structure I designed years ago.

My daily routine is different now – and it’ll continue to change in 2022 – and I wanted to get rid of the overhead caused by a time tracking system that was too granular. For time tracking to be effective, you need to remember to start a timer whenever you’re working on something; too much friction in the process – such as having to carefully pick from a list of similar projects – defeats the whole purpose of it. There’s also the opposite problem – forgetting to stop a long-running timer – which John explained and fixed in a separate story for Automation April.

So I went back to the drawing board of my Timery projects and reorganized everything with simplicity and ease of activation in mind. I cleaned up my saved timers and shortcut that activates those timers, which I can now trigger system-wide via Raycast on the Mac and the Shortcuts widgets on iPad. I split my work projects into three main areas – MacStories, Club, and podcasts – removed redundant sub-tasks, and grouped related activities under the same tags for more reliable filtering.

How I access my saved timers from the Home Screen.

How I access my saved timers from the Home Screen.

The approach worked well for MacStories and the Club, but podcast timers turned out to be a different beast. You see, when I sit down to record a show like Connected or AppStories, I need to take care of key tasks such as making sure my audio inputs are correct, checking out notes for the show’s outline and intro, and keeping an eye on the Connected audience in Relay’s Discord server. These tasks distract me from time tracking and, as a result, I often forget to start a timer for when I begin recording and, conversely, stop the timer when I’m done. I could automatically start a timer when a calendar event for a show is due in my calendar, but that also doesn’t work for me since it doesn’t account for the time before we actually record the show when I may be chatting privately with Myke and Stephen. Wouldn’t it be great if there was One True Way to automatically start tracking my real recording time when I start talking into the microphone for a show?

As it turns out, thanks to the latest update to Audio Hijack – the new version 4.0 that recently launched on macOS – there is. So for this week’s Automation April story, I’m sharing the custom system I created to trigger a single shortcut that starts time tracking in Timery based on the show I’m recording in that specific moment. Let’s take a look.

Read more

Automation April: Never Forget to Stop a Timery Time Tracking Timer Again

I’ve been using Timery to track my time using the Toggl time tracking service for several years now, and although I’ve gotten better at remembering to stop timers, I still forget sometimes. That’s why I built Stop Long Timer, a shortcut that periodically checks if you’ve had a timer running for a long time and volunteers to stop it. If you decline, Stop Long Timer offers to leave you alone for a while so you can wrap up whatever you’re doing.

Stopping a timer that’s been running for a certain period is the easy part. Timery has an action to check the duration of the current timer and another to stop a timer. What I wanted, though, is something more flexible because sometimes a timer has been running a long time because I’m deep in the middle of a project. In that case, I don’t want to stop the timer. In fact, I don’t want to be bugged again either. That part of Stop Long Timer is a little more complex and is a good example of how you can save data outside a shortcut to use as a reference point.

Read more

MacStories Unwind: A WWDC Preview, Timery and HomeRun Updates, ADAs, Swift Student Challenge Winners, and a Design Concept

0:00
30:41

Sponsored by: Genius Scan – A Scanner in Your Pocket

This week, Federico and John preview MacStories’ and AppStories’ upcoming WWDC coverage and recap updates to Timery and HomeRun, along with news of ADA finalists, Swift Student Challenge Winners, an iPadOS design concept, and link posts about the App Store and AirTags along with two music Unwind picks for the weekend.

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Unplugged
    • John has an update on his cul-de-sac, we preview MacStories’ upcoming WWDC coverage, and Federico lifts the veil on Apple’s restoration of historic Palazzo Marignoli, home of the company’s latest flagship retail store.
  • MacStories Weekly
    • ReadKit
    • A collection of iOS apps for Readers
    • A tip for removing Home hubs
    • Lots of App Debuts
    • A Timery giveaway

AppStories

Unwind

Timery Comes to the Mac and Makes Time Tracking With Toggl Easier Than Ever

I don’t track my time because I enjoy starting and stopping timers; I do it because, over the long haul, it provides valuable insight into how I’m spending my time. As useful as it is to have data on how much a project or task takes or how much time a task consumes relative to other things I do, the act of tracking itself can be tedious, which is why it can be so easy to fall out of the habit of doing it.

The reason I’ve used Timery, the time tracking app for Toggl, on my iPhone and iPad since it was released, is because of developer Joe Hribar’s attention to making it as easy as possible to track your time without a lot of fuss. Features like saved timers, widgets, keyboard shortcuts, and Shortcuts actions for automating timers have made the app a delight to use since version 1.0.

In fact, the Timery experience has been so good that I used it even though it had no Mac app, which is something I rarely do with apps I use every day. However, with the release of version 1.2 of Timery today, I no longer need to use a different time tracking app on my Mac because Timery has been released as a Mac Catalyst app, complete with all the features Timery users already know and love from iPhone and iPad versions. Today’s update to Timery isn’t just a treat for Mac users, though. Version 1.2 also packs in a long list of new keyboard shortcuts and settings for all users, making this one of the biggest updates since the app was launched.

Read more

Timery Debuts Powerful Time Tracking Widgets for iOS 14

Timery’s iOS 14 widgets in light and dark mode.

Timery’s iOS 14 widgets in light and dark mode.

Widgets in iOS 14 are a genuine hit, in large part because of the visual customization advantages they provide and the ability to be placed on the Home Screen. Back when they were first announced in June, however, there was concern about one way these new widgets would be a downgrade from their predecessors: widgets in iOS 13 and earlier could offer more interactivity, even to the point of acting as mini-apps.

Due to limitations imposed by Apple on iOS 14 widgets, I was afraid one of my most-used widgets would become far less useful. That widget is for Timery, the Toggl time tracking app. Timery’s iOS 13 widget enabled not only starting and stopping timers right from its widget, but you could also see a real-time view of your current running timer. With iOS 14’s widgets, I feared Timery wouldn’t be able to update its widget’s data often enough to provide a real-time timer view, and I wasn’t sure how convenient the widget would feel when starting a timer would require launching the full Timery app.

Today Timery’s iOS 14 update has arrived, and I’m thrilled to report that my concerns were entirely unfounded. Developer Joe Hribar has managed to work around Apple’s API limitations as well as could be hoped, and deliver new widgets that actually provide more functionality than before.

Read more

Timery for Toggl Updated with Shortcut Parameter Support and a Refreshed Design

Timery for Toggl continues to add new iOS 13 features with the release today of version 1.05, which includes improved Shortcuts support and new design elements.

The most significant addition to Timery is support for shortcut actions with parameters and data output. Now users can start a project with a description, tags, and its billable status. The action outputs Time Entry Details, which makes the project name, task, description, tags, start time, duration, billable status, and entry name available.

Projects and tags can be added to the ‘start timer’ action from your list of saved projects and tags when you set up a shortcut or from another source like a user prompt. Any tags applied by a shortcut action that don’t already exist will be added to your Toggl account, but using an incorrect project name will result in an error. Timery also supports adding multiple tags to an entry, although they must be separated by commas or on their own lines. Time is output in total numbers of seconds, in ‘00:00:00’ format, or written out like ‘1 hour, 45 minutes, and 32 seconds.’ The time entry name that the shortcut action generates is a combination of the project name and description. A separate action for stopping a timer outputs the same data.

The other available actions allow users to check the time logged for:

  • The current time entry
  • The current day
  • A project
  • A project with a description and tags

Each of these actions returns duration data in the three formats described above for time logged on the current day only. One thing I’d like to see added in the future is a parameter to adjust the time period reported, so I could use a shortcut to check the total time logged for a project this week or month, for example.

The new shortcut actions open up a lot of interesting possibilities, including the ability to do things like send time tracking data to apps like Numbers, which could be used to create charts. A simple shortcut that I’ve found to be effective is one that checks the current timer I have running and reports back with its elapsed time and the total time tracked today. It’s the sort of shortcut that’s handy to stick in the Shortcuts widget or on your Home screen for a quick time check that doesn’t require opening Timery itself.

Check Timery

Check your currently-running timer and total time logged for the day. Timery for Toggl is required for this shortcut.

Get the shortcut here.

From a design standpoint, Timery has added context menus, which serve as an alternative to swiping left and right on saved timers and time entries, to play, stop, and delete timers and entries. Although the addition doesn’t extend the functionality of the app, I personally prefer context menus to swiping to reveal options and will be using this feature a lot, especially on my iPhone, where using the context menu provides a nice bit of haptic feedback.

New context menus and refreshed UI for editing saved timers and existing time entries.

New context menus and refreshed UI for editing saved timers and existing time entries.

Timery has also made use of inset grouped table views, the card-like UI seen throughout iOS 13. Editing a saved timer or an existing time entry pulls up the card-like UI from the bottom of the screen with the same editing options I covered in my review of version 1.0. Again, the change doesn’t affect the functionality of Timery, but it serves to align the app with current design trends, which prevents it from looking dated.

As I explained in a MacStories Weekly column for Club MacStories members recently, Timery has had a significant impact on the way I work every day. Whether or not you track time for billing purposes, Timery is a valuable tool for anyone curious about how they spend their time. As a result, I’m glad to see it continue to be refined with the latest frameworks and APIs. I particularly appreciate the addition of shortcuts with parameters, which provide a lot more flexibility than was previously possible.

Timery for Toggl is available on the App Store as a free download with certain features available via a subscription.

AppStories, Episode 113 – Timery for Toggl Plus a Dialog Sneak Peek→

On this week’s episode of AppStories, we talk about one of our favorite new iOS apps: Timery, a client app for Toggl’s time tracking service. We also preview Dialog, a new seasonal podcast from MacStories featuring weekly, in-depth conversations with special guests about the impact of technology on creativity, society, and culture, which debuts later today.

Sponsored by:

  • Luna Display - The only hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac. Use promo code STORIES at checkout for 10% off.
  • Linode - High-performance SSD Linux servers for all of your infrastructure needs. Get a $20 credit.

Permalink