alt Hacker NewsShow HN: OwnTime – a chess clock for your day's priorities
I made OwnTime to balance between competing priorities in my life. The idea is based on two main influences: the concept of "roles" from "The 5 Choices" (2015), and my repeated failure to effectively implement time blocking due to the necessary flexibility in my role.
The app allows you to define time budgets, which are not much more than a few mutually exclusive countdown timers. The UX is essentially that of a chess clock for an arbitrary number of players with configurable time.
The whole point of the app is to kick you out of the running role/priority when its time is up. One feature that was essential for me was AlarmKit alarms, which only became possible last year (>= iOS 26.1). Another was watchOS support, as a natural surface for time-related matters.
The current version is strictly focussed. The timers track time allocation during one day. All timers are reset at midnight. I didn't build any statistics - you can export the raw internal SQLite store and make any evaluation or dashboard you want from there.
I don't plan to extend the app nor to convert it into a service. All data stays local on your devices (synced between phone and watch locally) and fully open to you. No need for an account or subscription. Thus, I ask for a small one-time fee of $1.99.
The website has a short video and rendered preview: https://owntime.app
If you want to go straight to the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6770125662
I look forward to your comments and feedback.
Comments
Very nice, I will buy it. I am also searching a special feature which add recurring alarms like every 45 minutes (for remembering to get up from my desk).
Can you add a feature like that or point me to a similar app?
Very nice, I like your approach and design.
Counting up would be preferred for me on some tasks. Sometimes the timesheet approach is needed, it'd be great if you could support both.
This sounds very useful to me, unfortunately i don't own an iPhone.
I don’t understand what the timers labeled “still yours” mean in the sample images. Is that just a user label or some sort of special category for eg uncategorized time?
I also don’t understand what the different colored parts of the ring represent.
Would it be possible to self-hosted for web app ?
I'm a little confused the you and me in “Alarms you when this budget runs out” and "Also cue me to wrap up time",
if I understand correctly, the time set are not extendable no?
Preset color themes would be nice to have :)
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This is a great (and tight) execution of a neat concept. I'm not in the garden of Apple so unfortunately I can't play with it, but the preview is thorough. I particularly like the voice integration. I sympathise with some of the time allocation issues you mention, particularly when it comes to important but not urgent things.
Relatedly - I've struggled a lot in the last year with time tracking for fixed price projects (not so important, but useful) and billable hours (very important) largely due to the amount of parallelism I now do; and I think this notion of a "chess clock" may unblock me on building my own tracker for this!