Show HN: A minimalist web timer for focus and time tracking
98 StephenAlvin 38 5/26/2025, 8:16:20 AM iamlockedin.com ↗
Started as a timer to track my freelance coding hours and stay focused. It’s local-only, zero-login, minimalist. Not monetizing it (yet), just seeing if others find it helpful. Thoughts welcome.
I made it for time-boxing, so setting myself a time limit on multiple tasks to not get distracted and get things done.
I just made it to have a simple tool, so of course no monetization, local-only and minimal as well.
For a while my time management just kinda took care of itself, but there are more distractions and competing priorities in life/work now so I might pay more attention again./
I would like to take this opportunity to share a little side project of mine called 't0'. It's an IRC-based timer! You can try it out by joining the #bitwise channel on Libera (https://web.libera.chat/#bitwise). If you're unfamiliar with IRC, there's a quick guide at https://bitwise.codeberg.page/ that shows how to join the channel and start using the timer.
More details on the project are here: https://github.com/susam/tzero
What I find most interesting isn't the timer itself, but how the community uses it. Following the channel activity helps me discover plenty of new and interesting reading and learning material, as members announce what they're reading/writing while triggering the timer.
What I'd like to see in a tool like this:
- loose / fuzzy autocomplete for tasks - shortcuts
PS. I made a tool for... sitting and doing nothing at all; people on HN seemed to like it:
https://sit.sonnet.io
https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/
I wouldn't mind using something like this but it needs to live in the system tray/taskbar/dock/etc.
Not in a tab in the web browser.
And then I can share the fact that I was doing something for some amount of time? Seems like something opposite to minimalism.
> Not monetizing it (yet)
This is amazing.
- Moved the sharing UI down and made the timer central
- Added a button to turn of the rain (which was using significant cpu)
- Lowered the default volume
Moving forward I'll:
- replace youtube audio streaming with just plan sound so your ad blockers don't go crazy
- find a less cpu heavy animation altogether - add import button for your timesheets
I added a feature to take in an estimation of the time i needed for a task and then lock me in. It would track estimation mistakes and keep a log of those. I also made it run only one instance in a browser. Works quite well.
[0]: https://www.bugsink.com/blog/tabdouse/
If you're curious for specifics, my contact info is in my profile.
Freckle does it well (letsfreckle.com), and so does Cushion (https://cushionapp.com).