Touch Bar Timer

Mini project!

Touch Bar Timer is a little stopwatch for your Mac’s touch bar.

I made it to track how I spend my time over the course of the day. I really only care about one metric: time spent on my #1 priority project.

There are other good timer apps, like Thyme, but tapping the touch bar is just that little bit faster. And you can see it in fullscreen.

It’s free, get it here:

touch-bar-timer.alexzirbel.com

(I had a lot of fun with the landing page and put an easter egg in. You’ll know when you’ve found it.)

How it works

Apple’s touch bar isn’t really meant to be configured, but you can add exactly one extra button to the four permanent buttons on the right. Touch Bar Timer uses this spot.

  • Tap to start/stop.
  • Double-tap to reset.
  • Hold to open the app preferences.

The timer automatically logs your data to a CSV file, which you can configure in the app preferences.

The CSV comes out looking like this:

start end duration total_duration
2018-04-26
17:26:48
2018-04-26
17:26:51
2.444552 4.876597
2018-04-26
17:26:55
2018-04-26
17:26:59
3.362658 8.239082

This makes it easy for you to run your own analytics in Excel.

Thanks to Pixel Point!

I started with the code from Pixel Point’s Mute Me app.

With Mute Me, you can mute or unmute your mic quickly and easily, right from your Touch Bar.

Here’s their writeup:

“Probably, your first useful Touch Bar app”

Hopefully, Touch Bar Timer is your second useful Touch Bar app.

Open Source

It’s open source! Check it out here:

github.com/azirbel/touch-bar-timer

All feedback is very welcome. I hope you like it.


Posted on April 28, 2018