Pomodoro App for iPad
Friday, October 1, 2010 at 12:15PM When we founded this company about 7 months ago we had one thing in mind: We wanted to publish our own iPhone and iPad apps in the App Store. We did (and still do) a lot of contracting work in this area and despite all the experiences and money we made, it is not the same as working on our own ideas. Ideas which lead to apps which we can use for ourselves, show our friends and sell to customers.
So here we are!
;)
Our first project is called Pomodoro App for iPad. It is a companion for the Pomodoro Technique and consists of two main parts:
- A touch-friendly and modern interpretation of the 25-minute Pomodoro timer.
- A scrollable list to plan, prioritize and finish activities.
When you start the app for the first time, the timer has a central position on the screen. You wind it up with your finger and start a Pomodoro. Of course the timer continues to run when you quit the app and it either triggers a local or push notification when it is finised.
Maybe you're already using the Pomodoro technique and have a sheet of paper with your activities. Then the app can be the replacement for the kitchen timer your husband or wife always takes away from you because she actually wants to use it in the kitchen.
But lets assume you are a bit like us. Your handwriting is messy and you are tired of writing down activities first in the activity inventory and then again when planning today's tasks. You get interrupted more often than you want to and usually have to put 1 or 2 activities back into the inventory at the end of day, only to write them down on a new sheet at the next day.
So the second part of Pomodoro App enters the game. You touch the task button in the lower left corner of the timer and the activity inventory appears. You edit your activities with either the iPad's software keyboard or a hardware keyboard. Each activity has two buttons to estimate the number of Pomodoros and a button to move the activity to today's list or back to the inventory. You prioritize the activities by moving them with the reorder control. You swipe an activity to mark it finished and archive or delete it with the familiar trash icon.
It is a very simple form of organizing: no tags, no projects, no overblown interface for recurring tasks. No dates except the distinction between today and some day.
We hope you like it. Feel free to leave a comment and give us feedback via our contact form or email.
Reader Comments (40)
Love your pomodoro app. It's beautiful, elegant and very "apple" like.
My only requests would be for the option of a ticking noise, and also a more obvious indicator of the time left. The segments are beautiful, but not that helpful in determining exactly how much time is left. Also, the ability to change the the length of a pomodoro would be nice too (probably in settings).
Also, do you have any plans to support the full pomodoro system, like logging internal and external interruptions?
Other than this, well done. I love how it has iOS 4 support, so I can take advantage of local notifications as I'm running the latest iOS 4.2 beta.
Love your work!
@Eugene: Thanks for your comment and the suggestions. We are already working on an update which will include logging of interruptions and a ticking noise. We hope to push it into the review process at the end of next week, so stay tuned. :)
This is the only worthwhile Pomodoro app for the iPad. Great work.
I eagerly await the new versions with logging interruptions. Reporting would also be fantastic: difference between estimated and completed pomodoros per task, quantity of interruptions per task, etc.
I just gave it 5 stars in the App Store.
Hello!
I love the app! It effectively replaces the somewhat effective process for pomodoroing I had set up using Toodledo.
I have stumbled on one annoying bug, though: I have a very lengthy Activity Inventory. As I tried to port it all I encountered an app crash. I managed to duplicate the bug and it goes as follows:
- When you have 20 items in your Activity Inventory, adding one more item crashes to the home page.
- When you go back, the 21st item that crashed the app is there, on top of the Activity Inventory.
- However, the item that was at the bottom of the inventory seems to have disappeared.
- When you delete the top item from the Inventory, the bottom item that had seemingly disappeared comes back.
I know that according to the technique, the Activity Inventory should be kept short, but I use it as a planning for teaching, so I add there low-urgency activities for later in the semester. As I complete task items, these activities percolate up, pretty much at the same time as they rise in priority. Therefore, having more space for the Activity Inventory would be great to me.
Also, another feature request: I manage to start some break timers by mistakingly using the pomodoro start button. This records extraneous pomodori for some activities, and I'd like to have some way to decrease the pomodoro counter for activities.
Again, thank you and kudos for your good work.
@hamelin: Thanks for the bug report, we were able to reproduce and fix the problem. We will discuss your feature request about reducing the number of pomodoros, but it probably won't make it for version 1.1.
Hi. I have the same problem with too long an activity inventory. When you say it is fixed, does that mean I need to wait for the next upgrade for it to ACTUALLY be fixed?
Thanks - it is a lovely app,
Suzi
@Suzi: Yes, you have to wait for the next update to appear in the App Store (which will hopefully happen next week). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Very nice app, I've been enjoying using. One thing I would like to see is the ability to both archive and send an item back to the inventory list; I use standard items in my list that I repeat daily, and I seem to only be able to either archive them or send them back to the activity list, and I would like to do both. Thanks.
@Richard: Great idea! We put the feature request into our internal tracking system and will definitely consider it for version 1.2.
Very nice idea. However why is this great app not available for the iphone also?
Regards
Scorpion
@Scorpion: Bringing the app to the iPhone is on our feature list, so stayed tuned. ;)
I started using the this App today and I love it! Good work guys.
Is there a possibility of adding Toodledo sync? I'd love to be able to use the Pomodoro technique to blaze through my todo list. I feel they'd truly compliment each other. (right now I have to manually type items listed in Toodledo to Pomodoro)
@Josh: We have already plans for importing tasks from different todo and project management systems and will consider Toodledo as one of them.
Great apps thus far, but Did I miss something? Is there a way to export the completed list?
Thanks
@ed: Since Pomodoro App 1.2 it is possible to export all activities that you have completed on a certain day. To do this, switch to the archive and tap the action icon on the right side of a section header (the line at which the date is shown). Then you have the option to export the list as a formatted e-mail or as a csv file (see the second screenshot in this blog post). We are planning more export features for future releases, so stay tuned.
Will the iPhone version be a separately paid-for app or will you make the iPad version a hybrid app?
@Stephen: The iPhone version will come together with the current iPad version as a universal app and will be a free update for all existing customers.
Hi Guys,
i love the app.
Will you notify us when the iphone version comes out? Is there a mailing list? I can't wait till it comes out...
Will there a sync function that lets you sync the data between iPhone and iPad versions of the software? Will it be a two-way sync system? that would be pretty awesome.
can't wait till the iphone version comes out! thsi way I can use the pomodoro app when reading something on my ipad too without the app running on the same device that I am reading the book in which I find kind of distracting...
thanks a lot!
@Semihcan: We do not have a mailing list, but you can subscribe to this blog and follow us on Twitter. There will be a two-way-sync between devices, but only for the data in the lists, i.e. the clock will not by synched (at least for the first release).
I love the app so far. It terrific. One thing I would like: room for notes/task chunks. One of the tips in the book is to group items that will take less than 25 minutes together into one task. I find that there isn't enough character space to do this on the app right now. Perhaps an indented (think blockquote) section appears under a task when a note icon is tappedt/return is pressed?
Very nice looking app!
I've been using PomodorPro on the iphone and your app looks like another winner for those who want to use the pomodoro technique.
Any thought to seeking an integration with OmniFocus? I tried many task managers before settling on Omni and being able to push tasks from Omni to Pomodoro for iPad would be killer! (Pushing the completion of said task back to OmniFocus would even be better!)
Much success with your app wherever you take it!
Regards,
Rich
Another feature thought, which comes up sort of at odds with the last: "Sort-by" for activity inventory. I was thinking of ways to integrate this app into my workflow which consists of a paper notebook (for most tasks), iCal (for appointments only) and OmniFocus (for recurring tasks). In working around the lack of space on each line I decided to try the Activity Inventory as "bins". The items I have entered are specific enough to point to the right place but vague enough that I can reuse them (upon archiving the task, great UI for that feature BTW). Examples:
• process/plan (first thing, make todays list, tackle mail - I tend to overdo this if I don’t time it)
• clean (mop, sweep, etc)
• tidy (pick up mail, put away dishes, etc)
• financial planning
• read
• scan (I spend a few pomodoros scanning notes and artwork every couple weeks)
• paint
• clean aquarium
• errands
A few of those I have set to zero pomodoros, such as errands. It’s not necessary to track it but when planning ones day it is a good reminder that a bunch of time will be spent in traffic, so I end up planning less around it.
… so back to the feature idea. While these "bins" are not very specific they are specfic enough that there are quite a few that I have in there. It would be great to be able to alphabetize these tasks so I can cherry pick them from the Inventory, instead of hunting for them each time.
I appreciate simplicity in tools and am not one to request features and insist the app is useless without my ideas, but I thought I would share my opinions nonetheless. I would have no hurt feelings if you decide against it. :)
@Rich You should look at the Pomodoro and Omnifocus post on 52 Tiger. (That’s how I discovered this app.)
In short. You can do some data migration into Pomodoro for iPad from OmniFocus.
@Erik: A grouping feature as well as titles with line breaks are on our feature list, but our current focus lies on the completion of the iPhone app. We are not so sure about alphabetic sorting, mainly because of the resulting challenges for the UI.
@Rich: Erik has already sent you the link to the solution from @zettt, who is a member of our local developer group. He saw Pomodoro App for the first time after our monthly meeting last Wednesday and had the same question as you did. We then discussed about possible ways and did some collaborative hacking with AppleScript, which resulted in his blog post and two versions of the script: The first one works for OmniFocus or content from the Clipboard (one task per line); the second one takes all selected tasks from Things. If you have any problems with these scripts, please let us know. We will also post a detailed step-by-step description about the scripts within the next two or three days.