Best pomodoro I’ve tried, especially for someone with ADHD
As someone who very likely has ADHD, the pomodoro method has always worked very well for me. Bluebird is probably the best implementation of it, I love the time tracking and task management features. It really helps me recognize the time and effort that I've put into studying.
Maybe useful … not clear what it is
There are timers, and you can set timers, and you can set breaks, and you can set what you’re doing. But utterly unclear how it all combines. Ultimately, trying to make the app work was just a distraction and I deleted it. It seems to be a collection of various functionalities without an opinion or clear ways to use. But, if someone wants to avoid doing their work and figure it out it looks like there is a lot of functionality in the app. How fluidly it can match various workflows is unclear.
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Fantastic app, nice design
Great app, with the flexibility that I need (both a stopwatch and a timer function). Well executed live activity support, a nice reminders that tell you how long till the rest of your working session (keeps me on focus because sometimes I get distracted).
Its good but too expensive!
Isnt there a monthly payment option?
delightful
this is the app that gets my things done. it just works with my brain. the absence of pressure to have a rigidly fixed amount of time allocated without losing sight of what you’ve determined as reasonable is an absolute game changer for me, alongside as the automatic prioritisation sorting. i don’t pay for premium as a broke student but the free version offers me enough. thank you team bluebird!
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Fantastic! Bought a lifetime subscription
I was testing out the different focus timer apps and am really happy with Bluebird. It’s philosophy of not having a pause button is great and i’m impressed to see how it’s adopting apple shortcuts and that it’s starting to have widgets available. I like the small widget size, but I’d love for there to be a version that doesn’t default to showing “Today’s focus, 0 minutes’ and instead shows my default-session countdown and a “start” button of some kind. Psychologically, that gets me to start a session much more happily than the negative reinforcement of seeing “0 minutes today”. It’s a minor thing, because the rest of the app is fantastic. The Apple Watch integration is pretty streamlined, and I really like that it seems to have reliable haptic feedback for when a session is complete. The ‘almost finished reminders’ feature is perfect for someone like me also! Some other apps don’t give me a wrist vibration at all, and I end up frequently peeking at my watch to see how much time remaining. Bluebird makes it simple and worry-free! It’s so close to being perfect that I got the lifetime subscription. Great work!
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Almost perfect
I've been looking for a good focus timer / icloud app for years and this app finaly checks most of the boxes!!! Bravo for the devs. If you are on the same boat, JUST BUY this app and support the devs!
With that said, A few things I noticed that could be improved:
1. the Apple Health integration is not stable, 90% of the time it does not write minutes to the Health Data. (yes I have the settings turned on.)
2. The Apple watch small complication should show the countdown timer instead of a logo when a session is active, just like Apple's timer app. (Unless it's a OS restirction?)
3. I like the bold timer ring design on the watch, but the iOS and macOS ring design is super thin, which is hard to see clearly at a glance.
4. This could be a bug - whenever the watch or phone is locked, the always-on-display timer bar (either on the watch complication or in the Live Activities widget) will resume to 100%, where it shouldn't
5. As a fellow designer, I wish there could be more color cariations. I know the branding is blue, but it would be nice to distinguish focus session and rest session with blue and green, for example. It helps with the mental model and ease of use. Currently, everything is just different shades of blue. I just wish the rest sessions could be in green, so people know even from peripheral vision what session is active.
All in all, these are just me being picky with an almost perfect app. Thanks again for the great work.
With that said, A few things I noticed that could be improved:
1. the Apple Health integration is not stable, 90% of the time it does not write minutes to the Health Data. (yes I have the settings turned on.)
2. The Apple watch small complication should show the countdown timer instead of a logo when a session is active, just like Apple's timer app. (Unless it's a OS restirction?)
3. I like the bold timer ring design on the watch, but the iOS and macOS ring design is super thin, which is hard to see clearly at a glance.
4. This could be a bug - whenever the watch or phone is locked, the always-on-display timer bar (either on the watch complication or in the Live Activities widget) will resume to 100%, where it shouldn't
5. As a fellow designer, I wish there could be more color cariations. I know the branding is blue, but it would be nice to distinguish focus session and rest session with blue and green, for example. It helps with the mental model and ease of use. Currently, everything is just different shades of blue. I just wish the rest sessions could be in green, so people know even from peripheral vision what session is active.
All in all, these are just me being picky with an almost perfect app. Thanks again for the great work.
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Distraction blocker on iOS doesn’t work properly
I love the app, but the distraction blocker is flawed. I’m unable to select single applications to unblock from within categories. If I select a single app to unblock while using Bluebird, it unblocks the entire category of apps. For example, say I want to unblock a single writing app that’s nested under Productivity, it makes all other apps within that category available, even though it’s checked as “blocked” in Bluebird. It essentially makes the distraction blocker not usable.
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Simply Great!
Honestly it’s a simple app that has definitely been helping me keep track of my studying.
I strictly only use it on my Apple Watch as to avoid getting distracted by my phone.
100% recommend it!
I strictly only use it on my Apple Watch as to avoid getting distracted by my phone.
100% recommend it!
Look no further
This app is perfection. So thoughtful and we’ll done. The timer on the Apple Watch stays always on - finally someone gets it. I LOVE THIS APP, on my desktop it’s so intuitive in the menu. Within the first day I was hooked on it for my focus.
