Hours for iPhone: gorgeous time-tracking app by Apple Design Award winner Tapity

Hours for iphone (teaser 001)

I don’t use time-tracking software because it’s a huge pain in the you-know-what. Part of the reason is that I don’t have enough time to keep track of how I spend my day.

On the flip side, I’ll be the first to admit there’s something inherently fun and appealing about the concept of monitoring when I work and how I spend/waste my day.

Realizing as much that most time-tracking apps suck anyway, Tapity — an Apple Design Award-winning studio behind Languages, a beautiful offline translator, and the popular student organizer and GPA calculator Grades — has spent the past three years bringing Hours for iPhone to life.

Now available as a $4.99 download, Hours takes the pain out of time tracking by letting you visualize how you spend your precious time…

In addition to its gorgeous interface, bouncy transitions and fancy animations based on physics and driven by Facebook’s Pop framework, Hours sports smart reminders, detailed reporting, a scrollable timeline of your day, a month view, the ability to create projects or categories with different timers and lots more.

Essentially, Hours wants to be a time-tracker that you’ll actually use. Any such tool must first solve the user problem of forgetting to start and stop timers because, you know, we’re not robots.

Hours 1.0 for iOS (iPhone screenshot 010)Hours 1.0 for iOS (iPhone screenshot 009)

To this end, Hours has built-in reminders that ping you in case you’ve forgotten to track time for a preset period of time, or if you haven’t started a timer by a certain hour of the day.

Granted, you’ll still have to manually enter all the details but that’s beyond the point for no one has yet devised a system that would fully automate the process.

What Hours does for you is provide the simplest and aesthetically pleasing time-tracking solution while giving you useful insights into how you’re spending your time.

Hours 1.0 for iOS (iPhone screenshot 008)Hours 1.0 for iOS (iPhone screenshot 007)Hours 1.0 for iOS (iPhone screenshot 006)

The app offers quick access to color-coded Timers that can be tapped in the timeline to optionally add detailed information, such as notes, custom time blocks and what not.

You can split these blocks, add more minutes to a block, tell the app when you’re taking a break, customize built-in rounding rules and more.

Best thing I let the promotional video below do the talking.

As per usual, Macstories editor Federico Viticci has an exhaustive review up so give it a read to discover all the intricacies of Hours and see how the app can help you get organized and make the most of your time.

Christiane Chan of AppAdvice has a nice Hours review, too.

Features include:

  • Smart reminders nag you at just the right times to start and stop your timers
  • Start/stop/switch timers with one tap.
  • The visual timeline makes identifying and correcting mistakes a breeze.
  • Rounding rules let you round time to whatever interval you are used to — 6 minutes, 15 minutes, and more.
  • Calendar indicates visually how much time was tracked each day, making it easy to see which days you forgot to track.
  • Clients, projects, tasks — all supported
  • Add notes to your timers
  • View detailed reports in the app or email CSV or PDF reports.

Hours is also available for companies and teams, currently in beta.

To learn more, check out the official website.

Can Hours change your mind and motivate you to use a “boring” time-tracking tool on an everyday basis? It’s up for you to decide. For what it’s worth, I’m liking it thus far and am hoping it’ll become part of my daily routine.

Buy Hours for iPhone for $4.99 in the App Store.

Note that this special launch price is available for a limited period: the app is regularly a $9.99 value.