Software Development

With Tameno, you set auto-repeating, “tapping” timers – the perfect companion for repetitive tasks.
It’s available for your Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV as a universal binary – always ready, wherever you might need it.

Set up an interval between 2 seconds and 20 minutes, and Tameno lets you know each time it elapses (by tapping you, by sound, or by screen flashing), and then re-sets itself to alert you again.

Posts in this Series

Part IHello, Tameno
Part IITameno on Your Apple Watch
Part IIITameno on Your iPhone and iPad
Part IVTameno on Your Mac
Part VTameno on Your Apple TV

Part I – Hello, Tameno

Tameno is the perfect companion for repetitive tasks.
The following real-life use cases are what made me want an app like this in the first place:

Watering my Hedge Plants

I don’t have any fancy gadgets to water my plants – I do it manually with a hose. And to water them equally, I used to count down in my head from 30 – easily getting distracted by neighbors talking to me, my fiancée telling me something, or the random airplane flying by.
With Tameno on my Apple Watch, I set a self-repeating timer for 30 seconds and start watering. Now, my watch vibrates every 30 seconds, telling me to move on to the next plant. And I can even partake in conversations now!

Doing Stretches

Whenever I feel my back tense up, I like to do some stretches. Before, I’d count in my head while stretching.
With Tameno on my Apple TV or Apple Watch, I can concentrate on the stretch, instead of having to worry about how long to hold it.

Brushing my Teeth

You know how you’re supposed to brush each side of each quadrant of your teeth for 10 seconds (at least, that’s how the math works out judging by my electric toothbrush’s 30-second timer)?
Well, I used to count the 10 seconds in my head, most of the time going too short or too long.
With Tameno on my Apple Watch, I just get buzzed every 10 seconds and I know I’m ready to move on to the next section.

Advancing a Photo Slideshow

I wanted to show my family a couple of photos from a vacation, but for some reason, Apple TV no longer was able to automatically play back what I had prepared, so I had to advance manually.
With Tameno on my Apple Watch, I just set a 7 second timer and we were all good.

The 20-20-20 Rule

There’s this idea that when you’re working in front of a computer display all day long, it’s good for your eyes when every 20 minutes, you take 20 seconds to look 20 meters into the distance.
With Tameno on my Mac or iPad, I set up that timer and don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Up Next

In Part II, we’ll look at how you can use Tameno on your Apple Watch!

Links and Availability

Tameno is a universal one-time purchase on the App Stores, so a single purchase allows you to use the app on your Apple Watches, iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs.
It costs USD 3.99 / EUR 3,99 / GBP 3.99 and is available in English and German. It requires watchOS 9.4, iOS 16.6, iPadOS 16.6, macOS 13.5, and tvOS 16.6.
Complications and Widgets on Apple Watch require watchOS 10. The interactive widget requires macOS 14 and iOS 17.

If you have any feedback, questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me – I’d love to hear from you.

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As a macOS engineer, what do you do when you’re told by Apple’s security team you have to turn it even more into Windows Vista and place even more useless alibi-security permission dialogs somewhere, but you’ve run out of new places to put them in?

Well, you get creative, and show multiple permission dialogs for the same permission.
Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!

Why the heck is this a thing on macOS Sequoia?
When you run the screencapture CLI from Terminal (or any other app) for the first time, you’re usually greeted with this dialog:

Fine. So you grant that permission, run screencapture again, but now you’re greeted with this stupid, infuriating, completely pointless dialog:

Huh!? Yes, I know Terminal can access this computer’s screen and audio. I just granted it that permission!

Seriously? Is this the way forward for macOS? Apple, I know you can do better. Because you used to.

Rant end.

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I recently had a feature request to add Direct-Paste to ScreenFloat. I had not idea what that meant, so I looked it up. It basically combines the copy-paste operations into one, immediately pasting the freshly copied content into the currently active, frontmost app’s active window. So instead of having to copy the shot and then pasting it into the active app using command-v (or your method of choice), it’s all done in one go.

Now, there is no way this is allowed in the Mac App Store: ScreenFloat would require the Accessibility sandbox entitlement for it (to emulate the command-v key press), and that’s a big no-no. Why? I have no idea – they do have an entire process of reviewing apps set up for this sort of thing, after all. But I digress.

With the recently released ScreenFloat v2.2, I introduced support for Application Scripts, where users can supply their own, custom-made AppleScripts, and ScreenFloat can run them with a copy of a double-clicked floating shot. With that, it’s possible to set up a direct-paste double-click workflow.
Here’s how.

A floating shot being double-clicked, immediately copy-pasting it into the currently active app, TextEdit.
The AppleScript

The AppleScript is fairly simple, and I’ve prepared it for you to download here (.zip, ~4KB).
It expects the shot already having been copied to the clipboard (doable within the same double-click workflow), and then emulates a command-v key press to paste it into the active, frontmost app’s active window.

After you download and unzip the script, place it into this folder on your Mac:
/Users/yourname/Library/Application Scripts/at.EternalStorms.ScreenFloat-[appstore|trial]/

Now it’s accessible from within ScreenFloat for the Run AppleScript double-click action.

Creating the Double-Click Workflow

Your double-click workflow will consist of two actions:

  1. Copy Shot
    copies the double-clicked shot as a file path, or as image data (png, tiff, etc)
  2. Run AppleScript
    runs the selected AppleScript

To set it up, open ScreenFloat’s Settings, select the Floating Shots tab, and under Double-clicking:, click with the mouse-button and modifier keys of your choice (you can set up multiple double-click workflows for different mouse buttons, with different modifier keys).

Press the + button below and select Copy Shot > Filepath | PNG | TIFF | etc
Press the + button again and select Run AppleScript > Direct-Paste Double-Clicked Shot into Active App

Now, when you double-click a shot with your specified mouse button and modifier keys, the shot will be copied to your clipboard, and then the AppleScript will be executed, pasting the clipboard’s contents (your shot) to the active app’s active window.

That’s it. You can now easily copy-paste floating shots into the active app, without having to do the copy and pasting manually.

Minor Caveat
If you set up the double-click workflow for a mouse button with a bunch of modifier keys, be sure to release the modifier keys as soon as you finish the double-click, otherwise the AppleScript will not send command-v to the active app, but [your pressed modifiers] – v, possibly resulting in a beep.
That’s why I implemented a slight delay into the script (0.5 seconds), which you can adjust yourself by just changing that number, giving you more leeway for releasing the modifier keys you set up for the double-click workflow.

Links

Download AppleScript: Paste into currently active app (.zip, ~4KB)
ScreenFloat Application Scripts Instructions

ScreenFloat Website (+ free trial)
Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 Blog Post Series
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store
Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle (includes ScreenFloat, Yoink and Transloader at ~25% off)

Enjoy : )

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