- Complex recurrence is key. I exercise 4 days per week. I only process my inbox (GTD-style) on weekdays. I triage bugs twice per week.

- Need to be able to view more than one day at a time on the calendar, and add tasks to specific days in that view — I plan out my weeks.

- Looking at future dates, it still shows my tasks scheduled for earlier dates. This makes planning difficult.

Ergonomic feedback

- Keyboard shortcuts (including arrow key navigation) does not work if you are focused on the name field of the task in the list. This means I can't really navigate, open, archive, reschdule tasks without using the mouse. Or at least I can't see how to. Might have to change hotkey scheme (use control or option?) as well, as command+A, for example, should probably still select all text in a field.

- I should be able to click out of the console — I keep trying to click or alt-tab out of it, like it’s spotlight, and it just hovers empty in front of my screen until I click to refocus on it and hit escape.

- When I've thought of building this myself, a key feature was adding tasks to the day's calendar (like, "I plan to work on X from 2-3:30pm").

Currently I use Asana for it's calendar view (note: this is not a calendar integration) and great keyboard shortcuts.

Anyway, congrats on the launch!

Recurrence is something we will improve. But you have pretty specific ones :)

We will actually add a planning view with a full week. We are definitely aligned on that. Stay put.

For the future dates, yes indeed it's not ideal. We are in the process of fixing that. Well spotted.

For the navigation, again, need to improve you are right. You need to ESC to come back to arrow navigation for now.

Clicking out of the console is not easy to solve unfortunately. We are on it as well. What you can do is either focus on the console and press ESC. Or you can hit CTRL+SPACE once more and it will hide the console.

We do support "do something on DAY at TIME for DURATION" but it's still a bit buggy. We need to improve it :)

Thanks for all the feedback.

How's Routine different from Todoist?

P.S: In your jobs section you're missing the how to apply part. Ex: https://www.notion.so/Head-of-Marketing-03dc3a3a6f0d45989936...

Regarding Todoist. It's obviously a great tool. But very generalist. Like Everynote for notes. We're taking more of a specialized direction for busy professionals: people who have a lot of meetings, want to capture non-actionable information (notes), have a lot of things going through their mind that they do not want to forget and a lot of tasks scattered everywhere, from email, chat (Slack/WhatsApp) and project management tools (Asana/Trello/Notion).

With Todoist, everything needs to be stored as a todo. We think this is too constraining. Some information is actionable (tasks), other not (notes). Both should be in a single tool.

Also, it's a productivity tool. It needs to be super fast. I don't want to have to switch to an app to capture something that is going through my mind. Or to copy/paste information from one tool to another. That's why Routine works through a keyboard shortcut that is available everywhere on your desktop. For now, you can only capture information, create recurring event, block time in your calendar etc.

But soon, you'll be able to join meetings, take meeting notes, glance at your upcoming events etc. all through one keyboard shortcut.

Also, with the whole supplychain security, why not just also promote your webapp, instead of a bundled electron app?

###

In order for Routine to provide the value you are looking for, it needs access to some of the Google APIs, most specifically the following:

Google Account

Google Calendar

Google Tasks

Google Drive

Your data privacy is paramount to us. We will NEVER share, sell or use your data in any way that could violate your trust in Routine.

The reputation of the founders (Julien Quintard and Quentin Hocquet), the investors and its employees are on the line. We hold ourselves to the highest of standards

####

No it's not, as I have no idea who you are. Also, you might say you'll never share, but what about some misconfigured backend? The investors invest in your company and take no liability. That's the whole purpose of a limited liability company

As for why we use Google services. It's because most professionals do use Google Calendar. Some don't, we understand. We might serve them in the future but we have to start somewhere.

We advertise the desktop app (instead of the Web app) because Routine is intended to be used through a desktop-wide keyboard shortcut so you can capture thoughts and tasks from anywhere. A Web app requires that you switch to your browser, then find the right tab and click it to then be able to interact with the Web app. We believe it is too slow for a productivity tool. But some people do not have a choice (Windows) this is why we've answered them.

If you do not trust our service, we understand. We don't force you to use it. It's obviously your right.

But just to make things clear (which we explain in the Privacy section), all tasks are stored in your Google Tasks account. All events are stored in your Google Calendar. And all your notes are in your Google Drive. This means we store no data on our servers (for now at least).

Why not just release a macOS version on the appstore? Or, if you've created a swift version anyway, use that codebase for a universal app? There are also quite a number of apps that allow myself to 'convert' it to a 'native' app, with the exception of some features of course (such as global hotkeys).

Both desktop and webapp versions don't work for me (401 from google apps, not gmail), and show a blank screen. Login -> uncheck some checkboxes -> retry and check the boxes -> still blank.

Note: This could be create completely (afaict) using the built-in cal/task integration features of macOS/iOS, and would allow you use all supported calendar/task-services. For example, noteplan simply uses that, and will support dropbox as storage in later versions I think (it was removed from the beta version)

Let us check the problem regarding your 401 and come back to you. Sorry about that.

That's why advertising the service around privacy is being criticized. It's a business. It will do business things. Saying it won't do those things is a distraction...like this conversation.

People who seriously care about privacy are not using Google to manage their information. They are not even your potential users, because they don't use Google.

Not storing data on your servers is a sound way to reduce your liability and attack surface. But that's an operational tradeoff that comes with a business dependency on Google's terms of service.

In B2B sales, not storing on your servers is a feature. But it's not really privacy. It's security.

But since we are asking users for their Google credentials, we thought it was more transparent to explain, for each service, why we needed it and what it meant. We prefer to be transparent than just ask for a bunch of permission without explanation as other services do.

And yes we are tight to Google because it was simpler for us to start this way. Again, most of the professionals we target use Google Workspace. In the future, the service could evolve and support other services like Outlook.

Just have standard terms of service.

A snowflake is always “for now.”

Placating people who don’t like your ToS is not connecting with people in your market segment.

Your market segment is people who don’t care. Your differentiation is treating them better than you can get away with.

Again I don’t have any issue with what you are doing.

I think privacy theater is a waste of your time and energy.

I am curious to what your pricing plans are (I am a tad hesitant to move away from my current workflow just to find out that your price model might not work for me.

Any thoughts on this?

[Edited for formatting]

PS excited to try the product. I will delete this comment after you make the edit. Cheers!

Best of luck, many commenters on HN seem to really undervalue the "it just works" aspect of things. It looks nice, seems to do something I am really anxious for help with, and not much more. I can see myself paying for this (potentially :) - need to get it working first!).

One perhaps funny anecdote for you - I am recently an engineer-turned-manager and this type of unified task/meeting management is one of the growth areas I've had to focus on most over the last year. Thought I'd let you in on a potential niche^2 market that might be a good fit for a blog post or something similar down the road.

Relating to your last comment, I would be great to chat. I'd love to get your input: [email protected] if you want to reach out directly.

Thanks

Do you have any plans towards building Routine in that direction?

1. https://noteplan.co/

I would even say that it shouldn't exist as a free app on the App store.

I really like the design, and how minimal you've kept it. I've been working in this space with Amna [https://getamna.com] and I know how hard it is to get the design right. It's soo easy to keep building UI for everything.

One thing I found frustrating was closing out of the "console" when I was clicking out of it. Since it was invoked with a mouse, my hands weren't on the keyboard.

I'm looking forward to where this is going!

For now, you can hide the console by re-hitting CTRL+SPACE.

I like seeing my calendar, notes and tasks in the same place. I think that going forward contacts should also be part of the app. If I take notes during a meeting, they should be linked to my Routine

Main thing I use in the app is the calendar to join meetings in a click

Few comments: - Can the Desktop/Mobile tasks/events/agendas sync, or is this currently being worked on?

- I want to be able to add a calendar event and be able to view it as an agenda (on the daily agenda), viewing an event or a task on the side seems to be counter-intuitive.

I'm curious, and mean no offense when I ask: when you and other startups cite usage at Telsa/Stripe/etc. do you sell directly to those organizations or is there some other threshold that makes you comfortable mentioning them.

I've seen similar on a lot of sites (sometimes direct competitors claiming use by the same large organization) and I often wonder if the company knows anything about it or if it's more a case of a handful of individuals (that happen to work at one of those companies) using the product of their own volition.

I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts here.

Best of luck with the launch and all future endeavors!

Half an app, barely a business. Why did YC back this?

This comes up a lot on Launch HN posts. The answer is always "YC backs teams, not ideas". They liked the founders and think the founders have potential.

If this is how the founders choose to use that potential, then so be it. Maybe they will make a success, maybe they will pivot. YC will back them up and help them either way.

It would be nice if I could connect my Apple-calendar with it as that's what I'm using personally.

Ctrl+space short key is nice but canceling it with esc doesn't work for me at least but I have to open the app to get it closed.

Also - I'd use it so much rather if it would be more independent from google. I switched off from Gmail this year so commiting to Google ecosystem this way isn't so nice.

Anyways, all the best for you. Let's see if this will be actually useful for me.

Apple Calendar is something we are obviously considering.

As for console which is hard to exit, we get that feedback all the time. Unfortunately, even though it looks trivial, it is actually not super simple to do. I suggest you re-hit CTRL+SPACE to hide it, it is the easiest way. Otherwise, you need to reput focus in the console and hit CTRL+ESC.

As for the dependence on the Google ecosystem, we understand but, as discussed through other comments on this post, we had to start somewhere. We will expand later but it just made sense to start on Google given that we are going after professionals and that there are 400M Google Workspace accounts.

Since you decided to include notes into your bundling as well (which I did not so far) I am curious: How do you expect people to switch their note-writing habits from Notion, Roam, etc. to your project? It seemed to me that the notes market is extremely competitive already.

The design looks clean and beautiful. Congratulations to your launch and I will try to sign up for early access later.

Notes taking app tend to be very generic. You can type text, create bullet points and checkboxes. But they it is for you to manually move stuff from one page or section to another to "represent" another day, time or topic.

In Routine, every note (being a page or a task description) can contain text, bullet points, media etc. But every checkbox turns out to be a full-fledged task that can be scheduled, opened to enhance with a description (which in turn can contain subtasks) etc.

We've basically closed the loop. Every note can contain tasks. And every task can be enhanced with a note. And then we tight those notes and tasks to what is happening in your life.

If you are in a meeting, you can take notes that will be linked to this meeting and its participants. If you create a checkbox (action item) in such a note, it becomes a task that you can postpone for later or schedule right away.

Notion is best for teams and does not have this notion of task, nor is it well integrated with your calendar. Likewise for Roam which is more for people who love to take tons of notes: researchers, journalists etc.

I would love to also have notes built into it - that way I won't be context switching and could (presumably) add tasks from within notes.

I've signed up for your app - looking forward to seeing it!

It's good to see people working in this space, though I feel as if sometimes the scope can be wayy to big. Everyone has different types of workflows, so I guess for a product to be used by a lot of people, it has to allow for as many possible custom workflows. Though at the same time keeping a simple design and easy-to-use interface.

It's hard for me to tell, is life.so Mac only?

[0] https://alexandar.me/lifetracker

You are making a great point. There is an inherent trade-off between customisability and simplicity. That is not necessarily a problem though because I think there are different target groups depending on where your product is on this scale. I like to think of productivity software as a pair of shoes where everyone has their preferred size and fit. That also allows different tools to successfully co-exist.

The desktop application is Electron-based, so porting it to Windows will be relatively easy. For mobile we go native though and that's why a native Android application will take some longer.

> What made you pause working on it?

I lost interest in building it, I still use it everyday but now I'm just waiting (hoping) that I'll eventually get back to it.

I've signed up to the beta, definitely keep me updated :)

Apple is clearly moving to having iOS apps work on the Mac. Do you think the iOS Routine app would work on the Mac?

I think it will take quite some time to reunite both world. But maybe indeed, eventually, we'll have only the iOS app that will run on both iPhones and macs.

Note thought that there will always be a big difference in experience. On desktop, we want the experience to be center-ed around the keyboard shortcut, the console and natural language.

On iOS (at least for most people), it's faster to use a well-crafter UI/UX than typing natural language. Though again, in the future, we might go in the direction of voice.

Time will tell :)

Are you assuming a phone here or including the 12" iPad Pro with a keyboard?

You can probably tell Electron isn't my favorite way to make Mac apps.

I totally understand that Electron's memory footprint is not acceptable for very small apps that only serve as a utility. For Life though, which is supposed to replace 2-3 other apps, a memory footprint of ~300mb seems fine to me. In-app performance is also good.

I cannot say anything about the iOS Routine app because I have not tried it yet.

I would have appreciated a "We're not ready yet, sign up to be on our waiting list". I immediately unsubscribed.

My Google account only has a first name so when I tried signing up got this error

{"reason":"invalid JSON OAuth response: missing required field family_name","method":"GET"}

Also, maybe it’s just the logo, but the design looks really similar to sorted3.

Regarding iOS, you can find it here: https://apple.co/399lDrW

Is this really that big of a problem? This is the second YC startup in this batch that is trying to fix this. I’m usually already in the browser, and if not I can cmd-tab into there in seconds. From there it takes me literally less than 2 seconds to type “cal” + enter to look at my Google calendar.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2xxcvc7r54mrnua/Screen%20Shot%2020...

Edit: works pretty well as an app added inside of https://wavebox.io/

I'm forever flummoxed that Outlook on Mac handles Gmail and Google Calendar just fine, as does Windows Mail, but not Outlook for Windows.

And YC are backing this? wassa matter? afraid to miss out on the next Slack?

- Section: Agenda-view

- Feature: in the "free time" blocks where no event are scheduled, have the option (+) to create a new event in that free block of time.

- Source: viewed on web app

Hopefully that makes sense!

Thanks. Very clear.

How do I change the Ctrl + Space hotkey? It's my language switch. So, I'd like to keep it and change Routine's.

But we've taken another approach for the Electron app not to become as slow as Slack or Notion. We know many people complain about that.

To give just one example. The parser in our console has not been written manually in Javascript. Instead we wrote it in Ocaml (https://ocaml.org/) and we generate the Javascript. This allows us to have a code that is more reliable, maintainable and faster.

We do the same for many other parts of the product exactly for that same reason.

I've installed it and before moving it to my app folder, I tried to run it (I always do this with new apps). A popup appeared with the title "A JavaScript error occurred in the main process" (weird behavior), I didn't read the content at first, so I closed it and reopened the app again (fast fingers reached cmd-q). Later I read the message asking to move to the App folder first.

Regarding OCaml, using such a strongly typed language enables heavy abstractions without a runtime performance tradeoff, leverages the static optimizer of the OCaml toolchain and outputs optimized javascript (asm like). This is, I would argue, hardly achievable by writing directly plain javascript. Note however that there are other tools that target javascript with similar benefits.

unbundled (calendar/task/notes) applications are still available if that's your preference.