Show HN: Time Cop – A simple, private, open-source time tracking app
I was recently inspired by a post on HN: “An app can be a home-cooked meal” [1] and decided I was finally done putting up with time tracking apps that didn't suit my own use case well enough.<p>I hate time-tracking, but it is a requirement of my job (grants that help pay for my job, really) and if I don't have an app handy, I tend to forget to record my time. I've tried numerous time-tracking apps on the app stores, but they've each fallen short for me in some way or another—many are too complicated, or don't _just work_, or cost more than I think is reasonable. Many necessitate sending data over the network for multi-device sync—a feature I have no need of, but can never disable.<p>Since time tracking is fairly simple, I decided to write my own app to scratch my own itch. I also decided to publish the app and use it as a learning experience—I've worked on parts of mobile apps before, and developed proof-of-concept mobile apps before, but I wanted to follow the process through from start to end. I also decided to localize it (using Google Translate) for the experience of doing so. My biggest take away from all of this is that the work required to create and manage a store presence (localization and especially localized screenshots) is almost an order of magnitude more work than programming the damned thing in the first place.<p>In any event, this is an app I made for myself. But if you want to use it or fork it for your own purposes, please do.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629</a>