Hi everyone,
I’m interested in having a very simple app coded for Mac desktop. This is to scratch a personal itch but also to use it as an opportunity to learn. hence, why I am asking for advice and ideas here. Anyone is welcome to also code something similar and learn from the project.
I want to code an app that checks whether a user has been away from their computer and count the time away. The moment they return to the computer, it will pop up asking them to log the time away or to discard the time.
The app will wait for an idle time period that can be defined in the settings, the moment it detects mouse or keyboard movement, the background timer will reset and wait for idle time again.
The plan is to have it integrate to time tracking services’ APIs, like Timely, Toggl, etc.
Timing app does this incredibly well.
I would like to expand the use of the time tacking services’ API’s and at a later stage post the time to projects that can be pulled from my preferred service.
Why do I need an app like this? [Use case]
I need to track a lot of time and I use Timely as a service to automatically track what applications or websites I am working on. But the AI doesn’t have the ability to track idle time or away time. Which is all I need to complete the time tracking service me. Timing does a great job of detecting time like that but being a native app it’s not ideal for me. I prefer the SAAS of Timely.
It’s helpful to have an app like this if you get pulled away from your computer by phone calls, walk-in clients, colleagues, and their one-minute meetings.
Any advice, directions, ideas, anything would be appreciated.
Here’s a screenshot of how Timing app prompts you
Info that will be helpful
What programming language/ frameworks would be great for this
What Mac interactions would be necessary to determine keyboard/ mouse movements.
How would you structure an app like this?
Would you use something like Electron?