Show HN: I quit my job and made an automatic time tracker

This looks like exactly the kind of thing I've been searching for, and I'm happy to pay a one-time price. I'd much rather own than subscribe.

Two things:

1. Will the local storage version be dependent at all on your servers? In other words, if I buy it once, can I use it forever even if you stop supporting it?

2. I would hit "buy now" today if there was a limited trial period before I was charged for it. $90 is a fair price for software (a little high, tbh, but I don't know another app that can do this) but I wouldn't pay that without having the chance to do a test drive first.

Best of luck, this looks awesome and I want to see it succeed!

Congrats on making a product! I've been using Qbserve for a decade with a one-time price (and it looks to still be just $29). Things that I love about it:

- No connection needed. - Ability to categorize my time by project - Adding Rules to categorize by page url pattern, document path, or window title. - Exporting the data from the local sqlite. - Ability to annotate the timelines and attribute it to specific projects. This is useful when navigating off my Rules while I'm working a project. - High level summaries of my time. - Ability to bucket (or discard) my time AFK. Useful if it was a client call.

Good luck on your product! I'm sure you can bring additional innovations to the space.

[https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/]

Looks like you might have been inspired by Klokki, which is what I've been using for a while. Seems like a decent UI direction, but quite a lot of UI for something designed for people who forget to use their time tracking app. The roadmap indicates you've got plans for a bunch of features that are hard to reconcile with the idea of something getting out of my way.

I do feel like that pricing scheme is also too aggressive, especially for a pre-order which I don't think I've ever gone for in software. Likewise your subtle comparison to "other apps" in terms of performance seems a bit silly, either have a clear comparison with real numbers or leave it out, imo.

My feeling is that $30 is on the very high end of what I'd pay as a freelancer, unless I was doing quite a lot of work and this offered me substantial value, and you don't have the trust up-front that other Mac stalwarts like OmniGroup or Panic have, who are also asking in the hundreds for their much more sophisticated and niche offerings.

Perhaps with a small upgrade/subscription fee, or a little less than $30 for a complete app, but with optional in-app purchases or subscriptions for integrations with third-party task management platforms, since an individual is going to need either 1, none, or a mix of integrations depending on how many clients in what industries they work with. A great app with an additional but substantial Asana integration (from your roadmap) would be a huge boon to people working with it, and only a hypothetical plus that I don't want to pay for if I'm not using it. Right now I'm working with no external time tracking systems, and don't expect to be, so I'd feel a little annoyed paying for an unfocused core product.

I do like the site, and you present the app in a way I like to see. I'd encourage you to iterate on the direction a bit, and depending on how many pre-orders you've landed (maybe I'm off on the price) adjust accordingly. I pre-ordered the Matias Sculpted keyboard for marginally more than you're asking, and it hasn't shipped yet, but I'm willing to take the chance on it because they already produce keyboards, it's so critical to my workflow that I'd be screwed without it, and it's a reasonable cost compared to other enthusiast keyboards.

Incredible value is worth good money, but there are some ambiguous constraints to how much I'm willing to bet on a piece of software in particular categories, despite also wanting a fair exchange for the developer and myself.

It seems like this is macOS only? It's not really explicitly spelt out - you just have to work it out through context clues (screenshots showing macOS borders, "macOS Ventura is 'recommended'").

I can definitely see someone not realizing before getting to the payment page - probably needs to be an explicit list of supported OSes somewhere.

Edit: just noticed the expandable 'what platforms does Taim support' at the bottom. That should be bigger, and not buried with the rest of the FAQ stuff imho.

This reminds of ManicTime which I used many many years ago when it was free. As per my understanding, it kept track of currently in focus windows and recorded window titles an processes. I guess this is doing similar.

How does this compare to something like Timely or memtime? Is the draw for an individual the one time payment instead of the subscription?

Looks nice. I'm a Clockify fan myself. Your app and homepage also remind me a lot of https://timemator.com/ (which I ended up not using because it was unable to generate reports that show me the percentage(!) of time spent on different projects throughout the day).

Does anybody use these to bill clients? My problem with these dealios is they can usually tell you what applications you have open but not why you had them open.

The auto tracker will tell me I spend a lot of time in notepad++ and mobaxterm but wont relate it to the case that prompted me to do that, so starting a free running timer is the only way to get a billable number.

It would be nice if you could account for two devices instead of one. I typically use a Windows desktop at home and a Macbook when I'm outside. Also, I noticed the plan widget only says 1 MacOS device while the text under the pre-order button says Windows 10+ is supported — not sure if that means there is windows support or not.

This looks awesome, I’m definitely going to give this a try.

Also, how has freelancing been for your burn out? Do you feel rejuvenated?

Looks sleek.

I just went through a period of testing out TimingApp, ActivityWatch, and Clockify, for automatic time tracking.

One important feature for me was a good API for generating reports, so that I can integrate it with my custom client dashboard. I ultimately decided on Clockify because I found their API to be easiest to use.

Do you anticipate adding an API?

Your website looks awesome. Congratulations on the launch!

Love this idea! Made by people who quit their job, built for people who quit their job. :)

Do you have any experience running any affiliate programs or is it your first crack at it?

> How does automatic tracking work in Taim?

> Taim tracks your activity by monitoring the applications and windows you use, recording session data without the need for manual input. This ensures precise and effortless time tracking.

The "Application flow" screenshot shows Mr. Demoman working on XYZCorporationsite.com - 2h 15min / Header.tsx for 1h 32min as well as a block of time in Slack, I wonder if this is really how Mr. Demoman works - totally focused inside VSCode and Chrome.

For my own workflow I know there'd be a lot of window switching between IDE, database tool, maybe StackOverflow/other reference sites, and the web UI. It'd be interesting to have "AI" (or what traditionalists might call "machine learning") recognize those to be belonging to the same project... And to also see that if the browser is on Hacker News, those aren't billable minutes. ;) -- unless the IDE is compiling[1]?

[1] Relevant: https://xkcd.com/303/

Trite comment, but your website is sweet. Really aesthetically pleasing.

grear work, two questions:

1. what UI framework do you use, since I see Windows support is already announced?

2. if I pay for an early bird license, would that work with the Windows version later on as well?

Looks interesting. How are you saving the data under the hood?

Looks awesome!

I do wonder will there be Linux support in the future?

is this only for Mac? is the UI a native app or web based technologies and running on like electron? just curious

This looks super promising. Two things caught my eye that give me pause:

> Save your seat for 67% off

The price listed ($89) is only 50% off the $179 listed. At $60 (~67% off), my gut reaction is "Oh that's just like an early release videogame, not bad for how promising it looks!" but $89 crosses into "Ehh, I don't know. Maybe I'll wait and see" territory.

> We are planning to launch Taim to the public in early Spring

Early Spring...2025? Is a preorder now really almost a year away?

Definitely something I'll keep an eye on though!

(edit: ope! Ignore point 2 -- I see you already updated the time to fall. Thanks!)

I've been wanting a tool like this, and just spent the last weekend hacking together a bare minimum version for myself [0], so it's awesome (and hilarious) to see this pop up now. Clearly you're doing a much better job at it than I ever could ;) Do you have any plans for Linux support?

[0] https://github.com/bo0tzz/focustime

better time tracking is sorely needed! If I never see the SAP Concur UI again in my life, it still won't be enough.

Quick bit of copy-editing: You probably want to say "Forgetting to start a timer is an issue *of* the past"

I didn't know you could presale simple productivity app a whole half a year before release, smells like scam.

Also username is from 2016 with zero activity before this post.

But website sure looks nice, although I hate this distracting mouse flashlight effect.

good to see someone still making beautiful desktop apps.

with web apps all over, we tend to forget the benefits that full desktop apps provide such as full offline access, not being dependent on the 'cloud'.

congrats on launching and good luck.

This is a bit of a digression, and I might write a blog post about this, but I welcome comments, either way.

It really seems we live in a kind of Twilight Zone when it comes to indie software (both productive, as we see here, but also in entertainment) pricing. AAA software (say, stuff being churned out by companies like MS/Apple/Figma/Adobe/etc.) is so aggressively priced, so egregiously recurrent (I actually am not even sure how many hundreds of dollars+ I spend a year on software I probably don't even use, except for maybe a handful of times a year—like Word or PowerPoint). Similarly, games are routinely being sold for 70-80++ dollars.

However, indie games (and as we see here, indie software) is held to this wild and insane standard. To me, even 100 bucks as a one-time-payment for productivity software (that is: something that literally helps you make more money) is kind of a no-brainer. And yet, there is so much pushback here. Even though we all probably pay for Google's garbage, for Apple's garbage, for space we don't use, and so on.

It's kind of how people brutally skewer the $5 Steam indie game, but if the $80 game made by the AAA billion-dollar studio sucks, folks seem to be much more forgiving (looking at you, Diablo 4).

I'm also working on some local-only software I plan on releasing some time this year, and pricing is something I'm very torn on. On one hand, it should be obvious that a one-time fee is the more consumer-friendly option. But something like $10 a month not only probably makes you more money, it also seems to be way more palatable by the general public.

> $179

Ballsy... unless you mean to make that deep discount permanent, which is a can of worms of its own.