[jpulgarin]

Hey HN! My name is Julian, and I made Effortless with aracena to solve a problem we were both having: how to focus on exactly one thing at a time. Effortless displays my current task, and a countdown timer in the menu bar, and although it sounds silly, it means that I have a constant visual reminder of what I should be working on. Effortless was also a great excuse to learn Swift and native Mac app development. I'm happy to answer any questions about the app or the development process, although it's my birthday so I might be a little slow to respond. If you have any feedback or want a trial code to test Effortless out feel free to write me at [e-mail] . Thanks!

[nihonde]

There’s a word missing in the text of one of the screenshots in the App Store. (I’m in the Japan App Store, if that matters.)

“...are you done your task?”

Also, notifications is spelled incorrectly. Those kinds of mistakes indicate a lack of attention to detail.

[emeraldx]

Can confirm. I too noticed these through the Japan App Store.

[aportnoy]

Fantastic app, thank you for posting! Is there a way to get the current task name to show in full length in the menu bar, similar to what you have in the video? I see a truncated name instead (i.e. instead of "do task number bajillion 30:00" I see "do task num... 30:00").

[jpulgarin]

The task name is truncated any time the app notices that the full name wouldn't fit in the space available in the menu bar. If new menu bar space becomes available I haven't yet found a way to get notified of that, so instead I try "expanding" it once every minute to see if it will fit. If after a minute of waiting you notice the task name still hasn't expanded please let me know as it's definitely a bug.

[mjlee]

For those wondering how they can make more space available - https://www.macbartender.com/ is a good choice.

[snazz]

Specific question: are the keyboard shortcuts accessible from anywhere? If so, using them would mean I couldn’t close a browser tab or reload a page, because it would be forwarded to Effortless instead, right?

[jpulgarin]

There is one global keyboard shortcut that is available everywhere, and that can be changed from the preferences window. You can change this shortcut to be something that doesn't conflict with any of your existing shortcuts. The other shortcuts only work once you've pressed the global shortcut. So for example, if your global shortcut is (the default) ⌘E, to open the task list you would press ⌘E and while still holding down command press F.

[karanbhangui]

Does your app support iCloud sync or is everything stored locally? Are there any plans for an iOS app?

[jpulgarin]

Right now everything is stored locally - we don't even have a server running. An iOS app is definitely something we're thinking about, although we want to focus on improving our current Mac app first. One of the main features in our roadmap is integration with Todoist so that you can pull in tasks from your Todoist list instead of retyping them.

[tedmiston]

Looks interesting. Any plans to offer a trial outside of the MAS?

[jpulgarin]

We have no trial version to download right now unfortunately. If you want to try it out feel free to send me an email at [e-mail] and I can send you a promo code to download it for free from the app store.

[Fnoord]

Could you consider synchronization via Nextcloud?

[jpulgarin]

Will definitely look into it!