User Experience

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 II – Tameno on Your Apple Watch

On your Apple Watch, Tameno is always with you and ready at times when your other devices, like your Apple TV or your Mac, are out of reach, and alerts you with vibration every time your set auto-repeating interval elapses.

Table of Contents
Starting Your First Interval

To start an auto-repeating timer with Tameno, launch the app by selecting its app icon and pressing Start Tapping.
Right away, the timer will begin its count-down, vibrate when the interval elapses, and start again from the top.

On the Watch, Vibration is the only feedback you have for elapsed intervals, whereas on the other devices, there’s an optional sound and screen-flash you can set up.

Congratulations, you have just successfully used Tameno for the first time!

Note: The interval will continue repeating even in the background until you end it by pressing Stop Tapping, or until one hour of background time elapses, or you switch to a different app – whichever comes first.

Changing the Interval

That’s all nice and dandy, but at some point, you might want to use an interval other than 5 seconds, right? Well, I figured as much. Tameno allows you to set an interval between 2 seconds and 20 minutes, and there are a couple of ways you can change it.

+ and – Buttons

For the most precise adjustment, you can use the + and – buttons on either side of the screen. This will add or remove a second from your interval.

Drag Up and Down, Left and Right

A quicker way to adjust the interval is to just tap and drag up and down, or left and right, where down/left will decrease, up/right will increase the interval by seconds.
Double-tap-and-drag to adjust by minutes.

Digital Crown

Naturally, you can also use your watch’s digital crown to adjust the interval comfortably.

Accessing Recently Used Intervals

Long-press onto your interval to select a recently used one.

Recently used intervals are synced across your devices over iCloud.

Settings
Count to Zero

With Count to Zero enabled, instead of counting down a 5 second interval 5-4-3-2-1, 5-4-3-2-1 (etc), it counts it down as 4-3-2-1-0, 4-3-2-1-0 (etc).

Haptic Feedback, Secondary Feedback

While you can disable Haptic Feedback in Settings here, I would recommend against it, as it’s kind of the point of the app to alert you for each elapsing interval.
You can choose between three different Strength settings for it: Soft, Regular and Strong.

In addition to Haptic Feedback for each elapsing interval, you can enable a softer, secondary feedback for every second that passes. Please keep in mind that this may cause your battery to drain faster.

Complications

Tameno’s Complications allow you to either just launch the app quickly from your Watch face, or start the last used interval right away.

Widgets

Tameno offers two widgets for your Smart Stack: the last used interval, and a launcher.

Siri Shortcuts

Any Siri Shortcuts you set up for Tameno on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, you can also use on your Apple Watch.

Up Next

Next time in Part III, I’ll show you all about Tameno on your iPhone and iPad. I hope you’ll join me!

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more
Why is Xcode’s popup-documentation tied to the compiler? Kind of defeats its purpose at times.