I’m learning to develop iPhone apps and Time Stream is my first App Store app!
It’s a routine app and you can connect the activities in routines to Beeminder goals to send +1 datapoints to those goals when you complete the connected activities. It’s not primarily a Beeminder app, but… it’s me; I gotsta have a Beeminder integration in my app!
Check it out if you’re curious. (No pressure, of course!) And if you do, feedback is most welcome!
I have a very similar app (I’m on android), and the idea of Beeminding whether or not I do my routines never occurred to me. It would be manual entry at this point, which I’m trying to avoid, but this seems like something that could be really useful.
It’s easier to implement than you would expect, I suspect. I’m a total n00b and got it working early on in the process, so give it a try!
[Edit: It just occurred to me that you might have meant an app that you use, not an app that you made… which would make my “just go ahead and add a Beeminder integration to it” comment a little )
Very cool! I love to see more innovation in the daily routine space. I’ve tried out a lot of different ones in the past and not been happy about them, but so far I’ve been liking Time Stream
I’ve been trying it out and have a few comments/bugs that I’ve noticed:
If the bedtime is set after midnight, it says that I’m sleeping for more than 24 hours. Perhaps it’s not ideal, but my bedtime is in fact after midnight. For that matter, it would be nice if there were a way to use the app when your bedtime varies from night to night, even if that’s not the best.
There’s an Analytics tab mentioned in the tutorial, but it doesn’t seem to actually exist?
Some of the tutorial items are cut off in the Today display, which was confusing when I was first using the app.
Deleting activities from a routine felt weird. I should be able to swipe from the right to delete, but instead I had to go in and click the delete button, which I didn’t figure out at first.
There’s no way to “skip” an entire routine that doesn’t apply for the day, other than manually checking off/skipping all of them. This felt really weird on a first install, which for almost all users is going to be after they’re already past their morning routine.
The “light” and “dark” mode buttons in the settings are swapped.
The app feels kind of laggy. Not sure how to clearly define that, but subjectively it’s more laggy than other apps. The slide from the side of the screen to go back action frequently doesn’t work.
…But on the positive side, there’s a lot that I really love!
I love the UI - the Now tab is super slick and the Today tab is really nifty. I’ve never seen a UI quite like it and it feels like a genuine innovation. The overall structure of the routines and activities was easy to understand, especially with the tutorial. I love the concept of planning routines based on their start and end times, and the combination with the critical time anchors is great. The choice of color themes is great, and I really appreciate the teal default. And of course, I love the Beeminder integration.
Thank you so much for this generously detailed feedback!
Absolutely! This is tricky, so I launched the MVP version without after-midnight support, but I’m working on fixing that now and hope to release that in version 1.1.0!
Great catch; thanks! Analytics are coming in the future and have made an appearance on some of the TestFlight versions, but they aren’t in this version and so the mention is pretty confusing!
Fixed! Version 1.0.1, which is waiting for review with Apple, fixes this in response to your comment.
True. I’ve added this to my roadmap. When using it myself, I’ve just been skipping all of the activities in the routine using the Now tab (in part b/c I like to check that I’m really not going to do any of them), but having a quick way to skip the whole routine will be much better. I’ll get that done in one of the next bug-fix versions.
This is something I didn’t catch b/c it wasn’t happening on my device, so thanks again! Turns out there was a race condition. That’ll be fixed when 1.0.1 is approved too.
Agreed! This is something that will take me a little longer to fix. I’ve been working on the biggest lag points as I’ve been building, but it’ll probably be a while before it’s as snappy as I’d like, as I’m sure my code has a lot of inefficiencies. This is one of the biggest downsides of my inexperience, I think, but I definitely see it and intend to keep working on fixing it!
This was all very kind! Thanks! I hope to keep working away at it and get it all polished up so it lives up to all these nice things you’ve said.
This is fixed so that it won’t suggest you’re sleeping over 20 hours anymore, BUT the app will still reset your routines at the turnover of the new calendar day at the moment. Adding past-midnight support is on the (not too long) list, but I want to get through any bugs first. Still, I think that shouldn’t be too much longer.
I also set up the app a few days ago (on IPad, since I don’t have an IPhone) and have a few comments:
First of all, it‘s super well made and I love how innovative everything feels. Even on Android, I have never seen a Routine App like this. It really helps being more aware of how I want my routines to look in my head versus how I can sustain them realistically. Actually, I think I might not need beeminder for this, as it has been really rewarding in itself to complete the routines on time.
I wanted to ask whether you already set up the calendar integration, since there‘s a button for it in the settings but it doesn‘t seem to work.
Secondly, I wanted to suggest another step in the tutorial: For 5 (creating a new routine) you are asked to create a new routine by using the + at the top. By then, I was already in the Routines tab and only saw the „+“ to add activities to the ongoing routine and didn‘t see the „go back“ button in the upper left corner. This led to some trial and error to find back and me being a bit confused as to where I could find the rest of my routines. I believe this happened because if you switch back to the now tabs or the settings, the routines tab doesn‘t go back to the overview of your routines, but stays in the specific routine you have opened. Although this is only a small thing, is there a way to make this smoother in the tutorial?
To help being motivated to use this app in the long term, it would be super cool to make a „don‘t break the chain“ type overview of how often you complete your routines, if you complete them on time or skip certain activities a lot. Although I love how minimalist everything looks and feels, so I understand completely if you want to focus on the essentials. Congrats on the launch, I‘m excited to see what you will build next!