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Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

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Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#91

Post by spoinkaroo »

stinos wrote: post #80

Away from the keyboard or watching a movie? Idle time is detected intelligently. Problem is it heavily depends on the person what is really idling. Ideally you should be able to read the mind to see if there's any work-related activity :] I'm still using manual time tracking mainly because of this (even despite the obvious disadvantage of forgetting to turn it on or off): there's all kinds of solutions like detecting…

I'm going to compare the app to tracking with pen and paper also. Maybe having to physically write down when I'm not working more will make me procrastinate less.

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#92

Post by ivm »

vitd wrote: post #87
ivm wrote: post #2

I was not happy with features and UX of other productivity trackers. Most of the time tracking software is made for controlling employees or for billing clients and I just wanted an automated productivity measurement. I tried RescueTime before but it was too expensive for its functionality ($72-108/year) and also collected all my tracked data on their servers. There is standalone ManicTime on Windows but OS X standal…

You've hit several good points here! This looks really cool. I've never used something like this, but I'm seriously considering buying it. I love the single price up front and the privacy of not sending my tracking data to some unknown server on the internet. My only complaint is that I absolutely hate the name. I don't even know how to pronounce it. "Cube-serv?" "Queue Observe?" Don't make me think. Also, I'd be emb…

Haha, yes, we had some doubts about the name's UX but nothing better was found.

It's cube-serve in my opinion, an observing cube. Well, I'm not a native English speaker... :)

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#93

Post by ivm »

podgib wrote: post #90
ivm wrote: post #2

I was not happy with features and UX of other productivity trackers. Most of the time tracking software is made for controlling employees or for billing clients and I just wanted an automated productivity measurement. I tried RescueTime before but it was too expensive for its functionality ($72-108/year) and also collected all my tracked data on their servers. There is standalone ManicTime on Windows but OS X standal…

Do you have a timeline for Firefox site tracking? I'd definitely buy this to replace RescueTime if it supported Firefox

I hope I can convince Firefox team to report page URLs to OS X accessibility. Or maybe I will try to commit it myself.

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#94

Post by lj3 »

ivm wrote: post #51
KayL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like no plans for Windows platform? (I'm a multiple platform user.)

Sorry, no, it will require complete re-write and the app also heavily relies on OS X accessibility. But I remember using ManicTime on Windows, give it a try maybe.

ManicTime looks slick, feature filled and usable, but the visualization it chose is confusing. I look at all those little lines and it reminds me of the windows XP defragger.

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#95

Post by curiousgal »

theseanstewart wrote: post #85
ivm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added price to the site, thanks. It's 25% off currently, I'm going to raise the price in July.

Just something to consider. I wouldn't mention when you're planning on increasing the price. Just that the price is going to go up "soon". Now I know I have a whole month to put off buying it and may forget about it in that time period. That being said, I'll be buying it. It's a great app and well worth the price.

Found the marketing guy! Solid advice. Kudos.

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#97

Post by harlanlewis »

ivm wrote: post #8
jtmarmon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is super awesome. I've been using rescuetime for around two years, and although it's worked great I'd love to see more feature progress. Also there's no 2FA support which is quite scary for something with such sensitive data. I love your dock icon as well. I was trying to build a custom version of that but for my tmux line, but rescuetime's API doesn't provide realtime info. Will you open up some APIs for the da…

Thank you! I'm researching what will be the best way to export data and connect to other apps (IFTTT probably). In case somebody would like to export the tracked information: it's stored in SQLite in the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Qbserve/ and has a very simple scheme of HistoryLog tables for each month that refer to Activities table that refer to Categories and Apps tables.

Your first comment in the thread was a near-perfect match of how I see the time tracking space. Will definitely hit the free trial. Very interested to see how it progresses.

Great to hear you're considering data export. I'd love to display time usage in a tool like Gyroscope (https://gyrosco.pe/), which already integrates with RescueTime and a variety of other activity-specific trackers. Visualizations and stats in Qbserve are great for diving into the details of time spent on the computer, while exports to more generalized tools help show how the big pieces of life fit together.

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#98

Post by ivm »

zmarouf wrote: post #71

Am I right in assuming that Qbserve only tracks active windows? To elaborate: If I have a monitor set to a fullscreen OSX Desktop with either Spotify or VLC while actually coding, the time spent listening/watching won't count unless the application is active, correct?

Yes, it uses OS X accessibility to get the focused app and its focused window.

Re: Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X

#99

Post by buremba »

ivm wrote: post #2

I was not happy with features and UX of other productivity trackers. Most of the time tracking software is made for controlling employees or for billing clients and I just wanted an automated productivity measurement. I tried RescueTime before but it was too expensive for its functionality ($72-108/year) and also collected all my tracked data on their servers. There is standalone ManicTime on Windows but OS X standal…

I looks nice and clean. I have used only 3 hours but I have a feedback for the application and website database. It can recognise popular Macbook applications and websites but the current database doesn't seem large enough. Can we tag applications & websites in "Neural" tab as productive or distracting? I think it would be great if you could just open-source the database and let people contribute it so that everyone can benefit from that.
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