Launching today
TimeCarver
Focus timer that carves stone sculptures as you concentrate
4 followers
Focus timer that carves stone sculptures as you concentrate
4 followers
Most focus timers end with a number. TimeCarver turns your focus into stone sculptures. Choose a stone and set a timer (1 min to 3 h) to carve a raw block into 1 of 48 mystery pieces, revealed when time's up. Leave for over 10 seconds and your stone cracks, though calls and locked screens never count. Free on iOS and Android. A one-time Patron upgrade unlocks Hard Lock app blocking, 5 more stones, 25 rare sculptures, layered sounds, and kintsugi gold repair. No account, no ads, no tracking.
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Hey PH! 👋 I'm Roa, an indie maker, and I built TimeCarver because standard focus timers never felt rewarding to me.
Most timers just end with a number or a streak chart. Once the clock hits zero, an hour of deep concentration feels like it disappears into thin air.
So with TimeCarver, instead of ending with a statistic, every focus session leaves you with a mystery stone sculpture you carved yourself.
🪨 How TimeCarver works:
Carve in real time: Choose a stone and set a timer anywhere from 1 minute to 3 hours. As you concentrate, a raw block is gradually carved away: rough-out first, then the form, then the fine details. You don't find out which of the 48 sculptures it is until time's up and the finished piece is unveiled.
Walk away, and it cracks: With Soft Crack, your other apps stay accessible, but leaving TimeCarver for more than 10 seconds cracks your stone (and cracks it again for each extra minute away, up to three times). Locking your screen or taking a voice/video call never counts against you. On Android, with usage access enabled, switching to productive apps like Slack, Notion, Google Docs, or Duolingo doesn't count either (TimeCarver manages a strict built-in allowlist so games and social apps can't slip in). Need stricter boundaries? Hard Lock (Patron) blocks chosen apps entirely until your session is done.
Keep what you carve & mend with gold: Every completed piece joins your Collection with its stone type, duration, and date. Longer sessions start with bigger blocks, and focusing for 75+ minutes earns you a Masterwork. If your stone cracked during a tough session, Patrons can repair the fractures with gold in the style of Japanese Kintsugi.
Focus to a custom soundscape: Pair the gentle rhythm of a hammer and chisel with ambient layers like rain, hearth, shore, birdsong, wind, stream, crickets, and deep noise.
Always in sight: Track your countdown on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island on iOS (or via Live Notifications on Android), and display this week's sculptures right on your home screen with the shelf widget.
💡 Simple, honest pricing & private by design:
Core features are free: Granite stone, any timer duration from 1 minute to 3 hours, 23 sculptures to discover, single-layer ambient sounds, and the small home screen shelf widget.
One-time Patron purchase (no subscriptions): Unlock Hard Lock app blocking, 5 additional stones (Marble, Obsidian, Rock Crystal, Jade, and Lapis Lazuli), 25 rare sculptures, multi-layered soundscapes, Kintsugi gold repair, and larger shelf widgets with a single purchase. 🎁 Launch special: Patron is $5.99 until Nov 19 (regularly $9.99).
No account, no ads, zero tracking: No sign-up required. Your collection stays safely on your device and syncs only via your personal iCloud or Google Backup.
(Quick technical note: Zero 3D models or audio files ship with the app! Every sculpture is procedurally carved right on your device using Signed Distance Fields (SDFs), with each carving stage cut directly from the one before it, and every ambient sound is synthesized in real time. Thanks to that, the entire iOS app is just 21 MB.)
I'd love to hear your honest feedback, especially if regular focus timers usually bore you as much as they bore me! What would make TimeCarver part of your daily focus routine? 🙏 I'll be around all day to answer questions!
On iPhone, does checking a recipe or my notes for more than 10 seconds crack it too, or is there an allowlist like on Android?
@adamvisu Yep, on iPhone it does. There's no allowlist on iOS. In Soft Crack, leaving for more than 10 seconds cracks the stone no matter which app you switch to, notes and recipes included. Calls and locking your screen are the only things that don't count.
It's an iOS limitation: Apple doesn't let apps see what you've switched to, so TimeCarver can't tell your notes app from Instagram 😅 I actually tried building a custom allowlist using the Screen Time API first, but Screen Time only tracks app usage by the minute. So a quick glance at your notes still cracked the stone, and there was no way to stop games from being added to the list. Android can see which app is in the foreground once you grant usage access, which is why the work and study allowlist is Android-only.
If you want to keep your notes or a recipe open during a session, Hard Lock is the better fit (just a heads-up, it's part of Patron). You pick which apps get blocked, and in that mode, leaving TimeCarver never cracks the stone 🙌