Your day lives on your phone. Sandglass keeps its record in the app's own storage, by the minute, with no account and no sync. There is no feed, no score and nothing that compares you with anyone.
Sandglass works offline. Read the privacy page →
Thirty seconds with Sandglass
The task grid, one day, the week and Hours, in half a minute.
The presenter is AI-generated; everything on the phone is the real app. Watch on YouTube →
Why it exists
Most time trackers are built for billing somebody, or for squeezing more out of you: timesheets, productivity scores, a run of days you mustn't break, a graph that goes red. Sandglass is for the other question, the one you ask yourself at nine at night. Where did today actually go?
So it is a kitchen timer for your day. You tap the thing you're doing, it keeps the time, and at the end you have an honest record of how much was work, how much was study and how much was the telly, with nothing that tells you off about it.
How it works
A grid of the things you spend your day on. Hold one and it starts straight away; tap one and Sandglass asks what you meant, including starting it from a few minutes ago. Tap another and it hands over; tap the running one to stop it, now or at an earlier time. One thing at a time, because that is how a day actually goes.
Hold to start, tap to choose
Hold a task to start it, tap it to choose, tap the running tile to stop. No form, no project code, no client. The tiles are the whole interface, and the running one is lit.
One clean record
Each day is a card: what you did, in order, by the minute. Open any day and it reads like a diary that wrote itself.
Fix it later
Forgot to stop the timer at lunch? Forgot to start it at all? Trim an entry, add one by hand, move a boundary. The record is yours to correct.
Your own tasks
Work, Study, Exercise and TV are just suggestions. Rename them, add your own, put away the ones you don't use, and an old entry keeps its name and colour.
A glance, not a visit
A home-screen widget on Android shows what is running and how long it has run, so you don't have to open the app to know.
Calm, on purpose
Near-black ground, one warm amber, and no red anywhere. A long day is a fact, not a fault, and nothing on the screen is there to make you feel judged.
What it looks like
A task running, one day in full, the week you are in, and the tasks themselves. All of it real screen capture from the app, on a phone.
Hours mode, for people with set hours
If your week has a number on it, switch on Hours: tell Sandglass your usual days and it tells you when you can knock off today, as a time. It also keeps a running balance of time in credit or time owed (flex, TOIL, whatever your workplace calls it), so that number stops being a guess.
Today
Knock off at 16:42Worked out from your hours, what you've done, and your break. It moves as the day does, and the widget shows it too.
A time, not a nag. Nothing rings when you get there.Balance
+2h 15m in creditCarried from day to day and never reset. Public holidays, leave and days in lieu are painted onto a calendar so a day off stops owing anything. Start from whatever figure your workplace has for you.
The figures here are an illustration. Yours will be yours.Leave Hours off and Sandglass is simply the timer. There is no target, no knock-off time and no balance, just the record of the day.
Free, all of it
Sandglass is free and there is no paid tier: every task, every chart, the whole of your history and the widget, for everyone. Nothing is held back and nothing is counted against a limit.
Everything ships inside the app, Sandglass works offline, and your record is kept by the app itself.
What Sandglass will never do
Not settings you have to find and switch off. Not in the app at all.
- Send you a notification
- Ring, buzz or wake your phone
- Colour a long day red
- Keep a score, a run of days or a percentage
- Ask for an account or a sign-in
- Carry an ad
- Charge you anything
- Upload your record anywhere
- Beg you for a rating
- Interrupt you with an upsell
Sandglass never rings and never notifies. When you reach your hours it repaints its own widget, which can happen a few minutes later. It makes no sound and there is nothing to dismiss. The privacy page has the detail →
Get Sandglass
Sandglass is on Google Play in Early Access. No invites, no waiting list. Tap the Google Play badge to install; every new build then reaches you automatically. Sandglass is free. The iPhone build comes later, and it has no date.
There's nothing to sign up for here: no mailing list, no email box, no “notify me”. Zone7 doesn't send newsletters, and that starts with this page.
From the same maker
Sandglass is a Zone7 Studios app, with the same quiet-software rules as the rest of the family: private by design, no ads anywhere, and nothing that treats your attention as inventory.