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Serene — The macOS app to get your focus back 🤫
Say goodbye to digital distractions and hello to undisturbed deep work with Serene, the macOS app for laser focus.
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@marcusataylor I think you accidentally packaged some extra stuff (e.g. node_modules) during the Electron build. The app is 500MB. Drop me a note if you need a hand sorting it out.
@mike_seekwell Thanks Mike, will give our dev team a heads up to look into how we can reduce it. I know a big chunk of the file size is the long music files we need for the focus music, but I think there's definitely some Electron pruning to be done! ✂️⚛️
@marcusataylor I understand the beauty in the simplicity of "one clear goal that matters." However, providing no way for including additional daily goals severely limits and restricts usage of Serene for people who can buy in to the product and who are also following a "Daily Big 3" type of methodology, or even for people who simply want to use Serene but also want to include more than a single daily goal. I rarely have only one goal for the day. I usually have a minimum or three real, quantifiable, realistic goals for the day.
Thanks for the free year of PRO. I will certainly use it as is and provide additional feedback as I have it.
I hope you consider adding the ability to include additional goals per day, otherwise, I can't see this becoming a must-have, must-use app for me, as much as I love the concept.
There is an app similar to this. When you unlock/login to your computer, it prompts you to plan your day, or reminds you of your todos for 20 seconds or so before the computer becomes interactive. Anyone know what app that is?
Looks great. Als thanks for the promocode. But I can not use it directly. How do I get on the waitinglist? The CTA on the site does not do a thing.
Marcus & Team Serene - This is great! Over the past few months I've hobbled together something similar using Alfred, some scripts and another "Focus" type app (that only had a few features I wanted).
Serene seems to be pretty close to what I wanted to end up with, so Thank you!
I see the app says that it blocks notifications, but I don't see the notification center DND enabled. Is this feature really working? (I'm on Catalina - that could be why? )
Looking forward to getting into this more, and ditching my rube goldburg machine :-)
@edholloway 🤣 funnily enough I started with something similar - it was ironic when it took 5 minutes to turn on all of the productivity tools I had to get into a state where I could focus...
So, we don't have notification center DND as a feature yet - I think the mention about notifications is relating to phone notifications with our webhook integration turned on. That's a cool idea for our roadmap though!
@marcusataylor Thanks. For me the DND is a must - Serene would be a home run for me if it did that.
Would love to know how the Webhook can be used for the phone notifications - that would be amazing!
@edholloway I've written up a tutorial on setting up the phone notifications here:
https://sereneapp.com/webhook-do...
Also, if you want to get really geeky, controlling internet connected lights when you go in/out of sessions! https://sereneapp.com/webhook-co...
@marcusataylor Awesome, thanks!
Unrelated - just finished reading the article Active Campaign did on Venture Harbour. Had no clue that was you until the end of the article mentioned Serene.
Love your business model and the one product a year process. I'll be spending some time on your blog!
I love the idea. But the irony that you ask people to tweet to skip the waitlist; creating more distractions for others and myself 😱
UI is simple and clean, not to mention how useful the app is for productivity! I left some annotated comments here too in relation to conversion optimisation on your landing page incase its useful - https://app.usebubbles.com/031c1...
It's a nice idea, but come on, a 14 day trial? Why do you think I'd pay to have this? It's a nice thing to have, but there's loads of them for free. I uninstalled it as soon as I saw it's a trial. You guys have loads of other ways to make money, paying to use it isn't gonna cut it for me, sorry. I can't pay for every little thing monthly, especially if it doesn't bring that much value to the table.
@edinvejzovic Hey Edin, appreciate the feedback. We're in the process of changing the trial from 14-days to 600 minutes of deep work free with a few options to increase this limit for free. While still technically a 'trial' we felt this takes a bit of the time pressure off and means only users that really make the product part of their routine (and get value from it) will be asked to upgrade.
We're a fully bootstrapped team so we do need to monetise this to be able to continue improving and developing the product, but I hear your reservations and appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Really nice, I'm giving it a try! What about a timer between the sessions (I usually take 10 minutes break every 50)?
Pros:
- Simple interface (no clutter)
- Works on desktop (disconnected from Chrome clutter ;))
Cons:
- Needs an easy like macbook-no-brainer onboarding process
@mwarcholinski 🙏thanks Matt, appreciate the feedback! Any macOS apps you know of with a killer onboarding process we could take inspiration from?
Tried out the app. I really love the idea and interface. However, its extremely buggy. When I press "Go serene" the whole app just freezes. I also cannot edit / delete a serene session that I have ended, which does not make sense. There is also only one choice of music during serene mode. Disappointing :(
@lee_yi_wei 😬Apologies Lee! We have a fairly big upgrade coming in the next few weeks which includes the ability to modify sessions in a lot more detail (edit, delete, move to future days, extend etc), as well as some other fairly big changes (inc. integrations, reporting and more).
Nice, this looks promising. Definitely going to try it out today. Awesome PH marketing vids and images btw!
@nate_davis Cheers Nate! Looking forward to hearing how you find it - any features/bugs/ideas feel free to fire over :)
This looks great! Cant wait to try it out.
Question for you, is the pro giveaway one year or lifetime? I entered the code but then it proceeded to ask for my credit card info. I don't want to forget and be charged if i stop using Serene.
Thanks and congrats on the launch!
@connerdrew Hey Conner, the code is for one year of PRO - if you're concerned about being charged you can cancel very easily by clicking 'subscription > cancel' in the toolbar. I believe our system will also email you reminders just in case.
This looks a really useful app. I sent an email yesterday without a response yet. Looks like you are having a busy launch time. :)
@munir_kamal 👋Hey Munir, where did you email? Let me take another look.
Just started using this app and have set my daily goal as well (broken down by sessions). Let's see how this goes :)
So far so good! Thanks makers
Serene is just what I need tried with brave, chrome, Firefox and it works as expected. I believe Safari is an exception in blocking of sites? or I am doing something wrong (User error). I will stay away from Safari if that is the case :) but will use this app for sure. Clean, clear and impressive. Music is so peaceful.
@abhay_nawathey Thanks Abhay! Currently we only have extensions for Chrome & Firefox but I believe we have Safari in the pipeline. Glad you're enjoying Serene 😊
Looks awesome! Is it invite only right now? I can't find a way to download it.
Thanks @iamjmw. Have you tried following the "Website" link at the top of the page? It should open Serene's home page with a special link to download.
@benjieboo - I did, it's just taking me to the main page to request an invite. Let me try another web browser.
@iamjmw Great to hear thats sorted. Would love to hear any feedback you might have.
I'm a big fan of Serene, combines some of the best elements of Pomodoro-style methods, task-building and distraction blocking tools into one smooth experience. The relaxing music is also a top bonus.
Solid app!! If you can add the ability to extend a session when it's finished that would be awesome. @marcusataylor
@sarthak Cheers Sarthak! Do you mean add additional sessions when you finish a session or extend say a 30-min session to 45-mins midway through a session?
@marcusataylor
- I mean extending a session by 10-20mins... (similar to a snooze button) when the session ends. I noticed while using the app that sometimes you just need a little extra time to finish the specific session/task and to keep things organized, it'd be nice if you could extend the session vs. creating a new one.
- another approach could be; allowing users to reopen a finished session if the user marks it as NOT-DONE or HALF-DONE.
I also think it'll give your team and users a great metric to track in the long run - seeing how often someone completes sessions in the given timeline vs. extending the session. Regardless the app is awesome, this is just a "nice to have" for the next version!
@sarthak Love it! Great idea Sarthak, will discuss this feedback with the team and hopefully get it in the next version 💪
Great app which helps me to get stuff done and organise my day. Is there any future development to block websites through Serene in Safari as I use this as my main browser?
@elis_davies @marcusataylor When will it be released. In this thread is nowhere a date of even the postings to be seen...
This is exactly what I needed! Thanks for providing a free license!
My feedback after using the app for a couple of days:
+ I like you're asking for the first thing I'll start with - lowers the barrier to start with the task at hand
+ Love the background sound, gets me in focus mode immediately
+ All in all have been superfocused whenever I used the app
Some suggestions / tips:
+ The how to set iPhone in silent mode tutorial is not entirely clear to me - step 2 is missing instructions on how to connect IFTTT to Pushcut (could not find an app named Pushcuts) en set Pushcut up.
+ Ability to set more than one goal - perhaps three could work better and still maintain focus
+ The Chrome extensions pushes away my Producthunt startup screen :(
Will share more feedback as I work with the app for a longer period.
@jorisknaapen Thanks for your feedback! If you have anymore feedback please get email us hello@sereneapp.com.
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