[HN Gopher] TimeTagger: Open-Source Time Tracker
___________________________________________________________________
TimeTagger: Open-Source Time Tracker
Author : wilsonjohn
Score : 137 points
Date : 2021-01-13 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (timetagger.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (timetagger.app)
| midnightmonster wrote:
| Congrats on launching. Page is only working intermittently for
| me, and the demo hasn't managed to load.
|
| I've been tracking my own time for the last ~month using
| progressive versions of my own in-development app that has a
| similar reporting style but is meant to innovate on the data
| entry, making it much more flexible and convenient (for people
| who happen to think like me and want the kind of tracking I want,
| anyway!)
|
| Hopefully I'll be "show hn"-ing it soon.
| bdcravens wrote:
| The most useful feature (to me) in time tracker apps is the
| ability to let me know if I've been idle, and options to handle
| that. (Most apps in this space don't implement this feature)
| senko wrote:
| Going off on a tangent, I want to thank you for this:
|
| > Notice how there's no cookie banner on this site? This site
| does not track you. Nor does it make use of 3d party services
| that do.
|
| It's a small thing, but shows you care about your users more than
| you care about peeking into every little vanity metric for growth
| hacking. Kudos.
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks, I'm glad someone actually takes notice. I really care
| about this, and would love more people to do too :)
| dreeves wrote:
| Nice work! I have no idea if this could fit into your roadmap
| (and this is probably the kind of feature request you should
| absolutely say no to) but my partner and I made a thing called
| TagTime that does time-tracking via random sampling (pinging you
| at random times) and I'm offering the domain tagtime.com to
| whoever subsumes the janky Perl-scripts-plus-Vim version we use
| and makes a proper TagTime-in-the-cloud. There's a pretty decent
| community of users to tap into but, again, it would probably
| entail a substantial pivot.
| almarklein wrote:
| Sounds like a cool project, but I think I'll focus on my Python
| scrips for now :)
| dreeves wrote:
| To clarify, by "subsume the janky Perl version" I did not
| mean touching any Perl code!
| l1am0 wrote:
| I did build a web extension automatically asking you for what you
| are currently working on. Not open source, but you might find it
| handy: https://byrly.com/waywo/
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Once upon a time I had to do time tracking to 30 minute
| resolution; what I ended up doing was install an activity
| tracker, then at the end of the day or month based on what window
| was open I'd mark down work. It worked well enough for software
| development because my editor reported the currently open file to
| this tracker.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| What did you do for meetings, testing, looking up documentation
| etc? I hope you billed for more than just time writing code.
| 40four wrote:
| I like a good time tracker app. I appreciate this is open source
| too! Some feedback...
|
| After playing with the demo, there is one thing that really jumps
| out to me I don't quite understand. It's looks like time get
| grouped into these little 'blocks' on the bar on the left. It's
| not immediately clear what forms a block though. Also, I don't
| quite understand the use case for being able to drag the blocks
| around? If you drag one, the start and stop times change _for
| every task in the block_? Weird.
|
| This seems very fragile. What if I accidentally drag a block out
| of place, and don't remember the exact start time? Then I have
| effectively 'broken' my time logs for a whole block of work. To
| me it would make sense to have the blocks locked by default, and
| allow unlocking in the case you need to move a whole group. But I
| can't imagine ever needing to do this very often.
|
| I will say, I really like the concept of the continuous scrolling
| main time bar on the left. Anyway, trying to offer constructive
| criticism, not trying to bash this project. Looks like the
| project is still young, and you've got a great start here! Keep
| it up!
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! The blocks on the left (in the
| timeline) represent the individual time records. These are
| indeed "glued together" when a new record starts right after
| another stops. You can only drag a record in the timeline when
| it's first selected, so it should be impossible to affect
| multiple at once. You can also move and zoom the timeline
| though, perhaps this is what was happening?
| macspoofing wrote:
| Make sure you have a robust plugin layer as people will want to
| integrate this into their existing systems, like SCMs, issue
| trackers, CRMs, reporting and billing systems, chat clients
| (Teams/Slack) etc.
| spiffytech wrote:
| I'm building something now that would fit in great with
| TimeTagger, but I don't see an API documented.
| almarklein wrote:
| The API is not public yet. I plan to though. Out of interest,
| what are you building? Perhaps we should keep in touch :)
| ttamslam wrote:
| Not OP, but I also have a project that would slot in
| nicely.
|
| I run a service that tracks work/sleep/exercise/meditation
| (along with a couple other data points that don't fit the
| duration model) via an SMS interface.
|
| I text it when I start/stop these activities and then it
| sends me reminders based on when I normally do those things
| during the day if I haven't already.
|
| It would be great to be able to push the data I collect
| into your service to have a unified view of how I spend my
| time, and also to pull events from your service to send
| reminders to do certain things via my bot.
| almarklein wrote:
| That sounds cool!
| petargyurov wrote:
| There's an issue with your cert. Getting
| SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN on Firefox.
|
| Edit: seems to be working now.
| almarklein wrote:
| I think it took a while for the cert to work on al continents,
| because of caching - the site has been up just a few hours :)
| [deleted]
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| The UI makes me want to vomit.
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks for the constructive feedback!
| specialist wrote:
| Tangent: I also want a coach & nudge app.
|
| I have chemobrain (and other stuff, TMI). So my mind wanders. I
| need nudges to get back on track. Like a reverse pomodomo. I used
| to have a remarkable internal clock (always know time of day,
| track elapsed time, without looking at watch). Well, no more.
|
| Example 1: An inactivity timer. Like the builtin reminder to
| standup and stretch. Once or twice a day, I just have to sit
| down. I'll pop some pain pills then veg until they kick in (30-45
| min). I never remember to set a timer, alarm. I want my phone to
| notice I've been vegging for an hour and remind me to start
| moving.
|
| Example 2: Time to stop. I'll start doing a mindless task,
| usually physical. Like weeding or picking up litter. It's super
| gratifying. But then I'll overdo it. I want my phone to notice
| I've been stuck on the same task for too long.
| whelton wrote:
| May or may not be of interest, but I've been working on a
| platform for behavior management. It's data, graph and rules
| based, which you define habits and objectives on top of (along
| with your reminders and likes). It has time tracking baked in
| (one of several data types). Web and app, API coming shortly
| along with Zapier support. Site is https://conjure.so with most
| progress updates and screenshots being posted on Twitter
| https://twitter.com/ConjureSo
| specialist wrote:
| Will mosdef check out. Thank you.
|
| Meanwhile, FWIW, started monkeying with Siri Shortcuts. Now
| have voice transcription logger thingie, intending to keep a
| better daily journal. Now trying to figure out how to lash up
| Streaks.app reminders with Health.app's blood pressure data.
| (I know, I should just upgrade to a bluetooth enabled cuff.
| But I'm stubborn.)
|
| I mention Shortcuts because I'm hoping it proves useful for
| the quantified self stuff.
| gsmo wrote:
| Though a bit narrow, I have found desktop (menubar) timers with
| ticking in the background to help a lot. As a matter of fact, I
| see mine counting down from the 5 min I allocated to check out
| YC and I can hear the ticking. What has surprised me most is
| that I haven't yet developed the ability to tune it out - so I
| always hear it. It also acts like a metronome and I believe it
| makes me work a bit faster.
| anoojb wrote:
| Would you mind sharing what app you use?
| gsmo wrote:
| You bet: It's called Timey 3. I got it off the ios app
| store. $3 USD! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timey-3-menu-
| bar-timer/id14211...
| specialist wrote:
| Thank you! A talking clock hadn't occurred to me. Sounds
| obvious now that you've suggested it. I was all but
| certain that Apple's assistive technology stuff had these
| kinds of features, but now can't find any clues. Eager to
| try out your solution.
| vnxli wrote:
| This is overkill for your example 1, but the apple watch has an
| inactivity tracker. It reminds you to get up and stand for a
| minute every hour if it notices you aren't moving. I've found
| it useful when I'm sitting around or working at a computer for
| long stretches.
|
| For your time to stop alert, the only thing I've found that
| helps is throwing everything on my outlook calendar - it gives
| alerts 15 minutes in advance of the appointment and that's
| enough to make me realize that some task is coming up and I
| need to prepare for it.
|
| I don't think I've seen an app per se that does exactly what
| you want
| specialist wrote:
| Thank you. I'm doing something wrong. I've dug thru all the
| settings, yup everything's enabled, and I don't ever recall
| getting a notification to stand up. I'll keep digging.
| Jarwain wrote:
| Possibly less overkill, I have a Garmin Vivosmart that has
| the same inactivity feature.
| ddon wrote:
| Are there any open source time trackers for teams?
| rokku wrote:
| Kimai has a function for teams:
|
| https://www.kimai.org/documentation/teams.html
| wanttocommentt wrote:
| I really like that more and more developers are doing the open-
| source/paid service option(no idea what's the term for it). I
| personally think it's great for both developers and their
| customers/users.
| wilsonjohn wrote:
| Do you see open source + self hosting could drive more adoption
| among developers rather than customers? Looking forward to hear
| your thoughts. Do you see model like Ghost could be a strategy
| to grow Open Source SaaS products?
| almarklein wrote:
| It is an interesting model, and developers seem to like it.
| TimeTagger is the successor to a similar product that is not
| open source, which I've posted about here, but never quite
| got a response like this :)
|
| I love open source and maintain several open source projects.
| By making TimeTagger open source, I was hoping to find a
| niche of "tech" users. And if it fails, at least the code can
| be useful to someone else.
| neonmate wrote:
| I recently created a site to collect all the web services that
| are backed by an open source repository [1]. I'm happy to add
| timetagger to the collection:)
|
| Hope there will be many more applications like this in the
| future. You can share your ideas in
| https://wintermute.app/ideas. Imho many services are missing,
| like a privacy first social network.
|
| [1] https://wintermute.app/repositories
| Brendinooo wrote:
| How do I submit a repository?
| neonmate wrote:
| You need to sign in with Github. Then you can add any
| Github repository https://wintermute.app/repositories/new.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Gotcha. Would love to see GitLab supported so I can
| submit the project I'm working on!
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks!
| wilsonjohn wrote:
| This is an impressive list. Adding tags, categories would
| help in browsing ideas and repo faster.
| neonmate wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I thought about this earlier, but
| it requires to maintain this list manually. What do you
| think about fetching the tags from the Github repository
| and link once synchronized to wintermute?
| wilsonjohn wrote:
| that could be helpful. Are you looking at launching this
| on PH? I'm see people can contribute.
| neonmate wrote:
| I would be glad about more people that contribute. But
| afaik launching this on PH would require to make it look
| more fancy. As you said tags and maybe screenshots.
| Otherwise I think the post will not get any attraction :)
| cphajduk wrote:
| freemium?
| robinhood wrote:
| Open source SAAS: OSSAAS?
| mrbuttons454 wrote:
| Typo on the front page under pricing: GLPv3 vs GPLv3
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks, fixed :)
| skinkestek wrote:
| Have we hugged it to death already or is it something else?
| almarklein wrote:
| I don't think my server has seen so much traffic in so little
| time. It seems to be holding up pretty well, but there are
| occasional requests that take a second or 2. I'm keeping an eye
| on the monitoring ...
| whitepaint wrote:
| There's something with your certificate. Getting an alert on
| Chrome.
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks for the heads-up. Weird, it uses Let's Encrypt, and
| I don't see any problems :/
| AbacusAvenger wrote:
| The CN is "*.transip.nl" instead of "timetagger.app" for
| some reason.
| almarklein wrote:
| Transip is the domain registrar I use. Could it be some
| sort of caching problem? The site (and it's cert) have
| only been up for a few hours ...
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I'm just seeing a black screen with "demo" in the top left on
| mobile safari.
| aloknnikhil wrote:
| I see the same thing. I'm on iOS 14.3
| almarklein wrote:
| I would expect Safari to work, could you tell me what version
| of Safari that is?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It's iOS 14.3
| almarklein wrote:
| That's quite recent. I guess the app is broken for
| (Mobile) Safari then. Sorry about that. I will make an
| issue.
| r4tn4l wrote:
| I didn't read all comments, just searched for "delete" and
| "remove" without success. My question is, if I can delete a
| record. I find that quite important, since I just created one
| called "bla" with nonsense, and then internally panicked
| slightly. If I try it tomorrow, I will just recycle my record for
| something useful, so a workaround exists. But I still think,
| deletion is somewhat crucial.
|
| Apart from that, some other things I stumbled over: - The icon is
| hard to see on my background, because it contains (too thin)
| black lines and transparent pixels. Give me some contrast!
|
| - The "House" for "Snap to now" feels unintuitive, but that is
| subjective. How about a text label, so you don't need an icon?
|
| - That "Calendar" icon for "Select Timerange" as well.
|
| - "Step forward" is one day forward. How about naming it.. more
| like what it is. A step is a generic thing that might be
| differently perceived, a day isn't (so much).
|
| - "Start Record" and "New Record" are pretty similar features. I
| do understand the difference, but I would enjoy more, if those
| two were simplified into just one in an intelligent way.
|
| - That burger menu is, pardon me, somewhat of a problem. There is
| so much information. I can see "Install App" in the installed
| App. "Export" happens there but also on the main screen. Which
| features belong where? Im missing a hierarchy here.
|
| - Your hint text in the "Manage tags" dialog is too long. Please
| build it in a way, where I do have to read less words. More like
| 5 or so (currently there are around 50).
|
| - Is that a refresh button next to the burger menu (left side)? I
| can click an empty button. Wait, what?
|
| - I really do like that infinite scroll and stuff. Looks cool. On
| the other hand it is quite easy to get lost. Maybe some snapping
| on day-level (rather than hour-level) might help.
|
| - Please don't require headings over button groups at all (and
| then even mix that with my initials!)
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks for the great feedback, very valuable indeed! At the
| moment, deleting a record is not implemented yet, but it's
| somewhere near the top of the todo list :)
| sodimel wrote:
| Thanks for this tool! However I think the UI is not really ready
| yet. I would love some transitions on the popup elements, as well
| as a keyboard control over the forms :)
|
| Since I couldn't find any tool that did the job for me, I ended
| up creating a very simple (open source) timetracking tool that
| suited my needs:
| https://gist.github.com/corentinbettiol/634b6f95928ccb702ac7...
|
| (pros: not in a browser, start when you start your work computer,
| can sort content with grep, can count hours of work on a task
| with grep + wc -l, cons: no fancy ui, fixed delay)
| [deleted]
| DishyDev wrote:
| I really like this, I think this is a great foundation. I've pen
| and paper done this type of tracking to try and see how long I
| get to spend on task during a day, what sort of categories of
| work I'm doing, where am I losing the majority of my time etc. I
| do encourage it if you've got the sort of job where this is an
| issue.
|
| I'm not sure its something I'd do long term, but it's nice to
| sample a few days and re-calibrate your time every now and then.
| almarklein wrote:
| Now that you're all here, I'm playing with the idea to create a
| CLI tool so that you can start and stop records from the command
| line. Would this be interesting to you or would it only be a
| gimmick?
| loxias wrote:
| It wouldn't be a gimmick, I imagine it would be a hard
| requirement for me to use the program at all.
| zomgwat wrote:
| Possible integrations with tools like Alfred (macOS app) is a
| good reason to have a CLI (IMO). I use Watson [1] to track time
| and mostly interact with it through Alfred.
|
| [1] https://tailordev.github.io/Watson/
| beshrkayali wrote:
| Org mode on emacs has some pretty nice clocking commands [1]
| that I find useful frequently. I guess a similar separate cli
| tool would be nice as well.
|
| [1] https://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-commands.html
| pgporada wrote:
| Interesting. I could see myself opening a terminal (or 10) to
| perform some small scope of work, starting the timer, and then
| closing the terminals and timer once that task is done.
| maaarghk wrote:
| yes, classic january stuff, but I was just thinking I could be
| doing with a daemon that I can control with rofi for tracking
| time, I could write some scripts to integrate it with freeagent
| and perhaps query how much money I made today and display it on
| i3status. with a CLI over your tool I would only be writing a
| few wee scripts, which would be ideal.
|
| (p.s. if anyone reading this has a suggestion that isn't tied
| to a python script written by someone whose new year resolution
| is "Launch 12 products this year and blog about it next year" i
| would appreciate a pointer. This seems like something a gnu
| tool probably exists for. I just checked and this one has no
| API which makes it useless for me since the value is all the
| boring work is already done...)
| wakatime wrote:
| What I really care about is the time it takes to input tasks. The
| demo app link has a record button with a difficult to use form.
| Is there a faster way to start/stop the timer?
| almarklein wrote:
| Hi, I'm the author of TimeTagger. Thanks for your feedback.
| Right now you can click the record button and since a
| description is optional, click start right away.
|
| Could you please elaborate how you would want this to be
| faster? A one click option, or perhaps a keyboard shortcut to
| start a timer? I'm eager to learn about potential workflows to
| make the experience more smooth :)
| mywacaday wrote:
| 1. When you go to edit an existing task and just click a
| suggested tag the edit button does not activate and it does
| not save unless you enter a space first. 2. Clicking on a tag
| on the right should work as a filter on the tasks. 3. Export
| to csv should have the tags in every row
|
| Well done on releasing and going open source, great
| achievement.
| almarklein wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. 1. Is indeed a bug, will fix! 2.
| It does that, right? 3. Not sure if I follow. ATM the tags
| are in one cell, delimited by spaces.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > keyboard shortcut
|
| Always a good start for any speed increase
|
| Are you familiar with emacs and/or vi ?
| almarklein wrote:
| Familiar as in I know them, and I occasionally use vi (over
| ssh), but not a proper user :) Anyway, I created an issue:
| https://github.com/almarklein/timetagger/issues/11
| loxias wrote:
| This is a very interesting project and I'm looking forward to
| diving in over the coming weeks.
|
| Why not immediately? Because I'm a happy user of
| ActivityWatch -- a fantastic similar tool, which, quoting the
| authors is " The best free and open-source automated time
| tracker. Cross-platform, extensible, privacy-focused."
|
| I encourage you to check it out, if you haven't already. The
| pluggable and diverse watchers that AW uses are the true
| source of its power. It's under active development (donno why
| another comment claimed otherwise) and I've been using it on
| everything for 2 years now.
|
| I can't wait to do a head between the two, and a writeup. I'm
| sure there are features that will "cross potentate" between
| the two projects
| almarklein wrote:
| Will check it out, and am looking forward to your writeup!
| ErikBjare wrote:
| I'm the maintainer of ActivityWatch, and comments like this
| make me very happy!
| crazypython wrote:
| > Could you please elaborate how you would want this to be
| faster? A one click option, or perhaps a keyboard shortcut to
| start a timer? I'm eager to learn about potential workflows
| to make the experience more smooth :)
|
| Something like ActivityWatch (open-source, non-functioning)
| or Timing (proprietary, functioning, for Mac): Keeps track of
| your app usage by app and app title and directory,
| automatically suggests tasks to make based on app usage.
| ErikBjare wrote:
| I'm the maintainer of ActivityWatch (happy to see it
| mentioned!) and automating the process of time tracking was
| why I started building it (along with frustrations I had
| with RescueTime).
|
| Curious what you mean by 'non-functioning' here :)
| almarklein wrote:
| Automated solutions like that seem really nice, but it's
| not possible for a web app to know much about what you're
| doing outside of the app itself.
| crazypython wrote:
| Then don't make it a web app. Make a native app. Or a
| native app that sends the data to a web app via localhost
| websocket.
| pacifika wrote:
| Not sure who in your target audience can pay $2 but not $5/month
| but why not add a premium plan with as extra the priority
| support?
| almarklein wrote:
| I figured I'd want to make it cheaper than Toggl et al.,
| because people might feel they'd get less features. Plus there
| is no free plan, so the paid plans don't have to pay for the
| free users ;) - Anyway, I'm kinda done with multiple tiers, and
| like the idea of one simple price.
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