Timeful

kaolin fire

About this app

Timeful says the time out loud, on the minute, so time stops disappearing.

Made for time blindness — the ADHD kind, the hyperfocus kind, the where-did-that-hour-go kind. The alarm was never really the problem. The problem is that nothing happens between starting and the alarm, so when it goes off it goes off out of nowhere. Timeful fills that gap. You hear "four minutes", then "five minutes", and time becomes something you can feel passing instead of something you have to keep stopping to check. By the time the end arrives you already knew it was coming, and you have been winding down for a while.

Nothing to look at. No jarring alarm. Just a voice, once a minute, while you get on with what you were doing.

THREE SIMPLE MODES

• TIMER - counts up from zero. How long have I actually been at this?
• CLOCK - keeps you apprised of the actual time, every minute. The thing at three o'clock stops being a thing that happens at three o'clock.
• COUNTDOWN - counts down when that helps, and keeps counting after zero - "two minutes over" - to bring you back if you got lost.

Same idea three ways: you hear it coming.

WHILE YOU'RE ELSEWHERE

• The count lives in your notification shade and on the lock screen, ticking - and on Android 16 it shows as a Live Update in the status bar
• Lock screen and Quick Settings media controls pause, resume, and shift a countdown by five minutes
• A Home Screen widget keeps the count in view
• A Quick Settings tile starts and stops with one tap
• Long-press the icon for Start, Clock, Countdown, Stop, and Restart
• Music Priority plays Timeful alongside your music, dipping it only for announcements
• Tells you when your device is muted, before you rely on it
• Automation-friendly: timeful:// links and broadcast actions for Tasker, MacroDroid, and friends (start, stop, pause, resume, add or remove minutes, status)

KEY FEATURES

• Voice announces every minute clearly
• Continues with the screen off and after you swipe the app away
• No jarring alarms
• Follows your text size setting
• Simple, distraction-free interface
• One-time purchase (no subscriptions!)

WHERE IT HELPS

Anywhere the point is knowing how long you have been at it and how long is left: work blocks and Pomodoro intervals, homework and study sessions, morning and evening routines, coming out of hyperfocus, transitions between tasks, cooking, workouts, meditation and breathing practice, screen-time limits, kids' turns.

WHY TIMEFUL?

A visual timer only works if you look at it, and looking is the thing that breaks your focus. Timeful tells you instead. The announcements are quiet, regular and easy to half-ignore, which is exactly what makes them work: no anxiety while you are in it, and no ambush at the end.

"From the time you start until the time you stop, Timeful counts aloud to help you be mindful of every minute."

Produced by Craig Mieritz
Design by Fiel Valdez

What’s new

Set a countdown by sliding the digits: drag the big number up or down and it turns like a wheel, a tick per minute, the value it will land on drawn in the face colour. Tap the number to type one instead. A drag from any of the numbers works, not only the middle one.
Stopping a paused countdown now announces the time it was paused at. The wheel and the once-only hint no longer speak.