Over the last year and a half, I’ve spent more than 1,000 hours completely redesigning and rewriting Balance from scratch. After obsessing over every small detail, from design to code, I’m really excited to finally release it to the world!
Why a redesign?
Balance 1 has been praised by many for its design and UX, but it built on a foundation that was never meant for serious time tracking.
Switching between workspaces, for instance, meant clocking out and back in again, which would reset your break timer. Balance 2 solves this by breaking sessions up into time blocks.
This also allows for a seamless integration with a much more powerful focus timer, supporting many different types of workflows, like Pomodoro with short and long breaks.
The new designs also give me more flexibility to tweak and improve Balance over time, which I very much look forward to!
Why a rewrite?
I wrote the first lines of Balance code over 3 years ago, in July 2022. I’ve learned a lot as a SwiftUI developer since then and write much better code these days, so I’ve been itching to give the codebase a much-needed clean-up.
SwiftUI itself has also changed quite a bit during this time, and there are many exciting APIs and frameworks available now that I’ve been wanting to adopt, like the Observable framework and SwiftData.
It’s also a lot of fun to start things from scratch, which is possible for a side project like Balance where I don’t have to worry too much about whether it’s financially worth it or not.
What’s new?
The list of new features and improvements in Balance 2 is very long, but here’s a selection:
- iCloud sync
- Log charts with monthly and yearly views
- A subtle glow that gradually lights up your screen when it’s time for a break
- A Balance score to help you reflect on your work-life balance
- Weekly workspace goals
- Workspace work windows
- Billable time tracking
- Advanced exports (more formats, options, and data)
- Translated to 33 (!) languages
- Deep system integration (Spotlight, Shortcuts, Focus Filters, Siri)
- Lifetime plans
What’s next?
I still have a long list of features I want to add and improvements to make, but in the next few weeks I will try to mainly focus on something I neglected with Balance 1: marketing.
While Balance is still a side project, my goal is for it to grow into a sustainable business; not to replace my full-time job (which I love), but to learn more about running a “real” app business.
Despite my utter lack of marketing efforts with Balance 1, the organic growth has been quite steady. It’s very clear to me that there’s potential for Balance to grow a lot, so I’m excited to see what I can do here.
Oh, and don’t worry, Balance for iOS and iPadOS (by far the most common request I get) is high up on my TODO list! :)
Download the new version of Balance in the App Store (opens in new tab) and let me know what you think!
Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who joined the beta and shared feedback along the way. Balance 2 is much better because of you!