Marcus Taylor

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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Marcus Taylor
Hey Product Hunt! We built Serene to enable remote workers to get their focus back and do their best work, free of digital distractions, in one click. Combining over a dozen focus-enhancing techniques, Serene will: 🎯Prompt you to plan your day around one clear goal that matters ⏰Break your day into clearly defined intervals of focused work 🚫Block access to distracting websites and apps during focus sessions 📊Track your productivity & common distractions 🎶Enhance your concentration with focus music We’d love to hear your feedback or feature suggestions we could include which would help you focus and do more of your best work! Feel free to leave a comment below :) PS - In the next few months, we'll also be launching Serene for teams, allowing you to track team productivity & distractions, get visibility on whether your colleagues are in deep work, and more. We're currently looking for 10 small teams (5-15 people) to beta test this - let me know in the comments if you're interested!
Dhananjay Goel
@marcusataylor The app looks really good. Congratulations on the launch.
Marcus Taylor
@dhananjaygoel Thanks Dhananjay!
Mike Ritchie
@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.
Marcus Taylor
@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! ✂️⚛️
Kevin Gilbert
@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.
Matt Warcholinski
Pros: - Simple interface (no clutter) - Works on desktop (disconnected from Chrome clutter ;)) Cons: - Needs an easy like macbook-no-brainer onboarding process
Marcus Taylor
@mwarcholinski 🙏thanks Matt, appreciate the feedback! Any macOS apps you know of with a killer onboarding process we could take inspiration from?
R T
Serene looks great. I'm interested too see how this app will improve my workflow in the coming week.
Marcus Taylor
@r_t3 🎉
Aisha (Skippy) Kellaway
Simple, intuitive and combines the functionality of multiple apps which you would have needed before Serene
Charlie Williams
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.
Marcus Taylor
@pagesauce Thanks Charlie, any feedback on how it could be improved?
Antonina Krus
Looks promising! Congrats on the launch!
Marcus Taylor
@antonina_krus Thanks Antonina 😊
Glenn V
Amazing app, important issue you want to tackle!
Marcus Taylor
@glenn_v Cheers Glenn!
Andrew Woznack
Serene looks promising. I have using it this morning so far I'm impressed. I can see something like this being useful.
Marcus Taylor
@andrew_woznack Thanks Andrew! 💪
Paul Harker
Serene is great! One thing I'd like to see is a bit more flexibility in organising/postponing sessions. It seems like if you have to stop a session once it's started, you have to mark it as completed... sometimes I just want to pause a session. Also, I had a bit of an issue of sessions being activated in the wrong order, particularly if I'd edited them/changed the order. All that being said, however, I got a lot done this morning and I think Serene was a big part of that. Thanks!
Paul Harker
I do realise you can 'pause' a session btw... I mean more like pause it, and edit other sessions, and come back to it. Maybe I'm just not used to it yet...
Paul Harker
Also it now seems to have stopped me making new sessions after 3 sessions? Is that a feature or a bug? I can only work on tomorrow's sessions...
Marcus Taylor
@paul_harker Hey Paul Really appreciate the feedback 🙏I know the editing of sessions mid-session is something we're working on and should have some improvements shipped in the coming months. Interesting point about adding more sessions. We currently don't allow more sessions to be added once you've finalised your day (and instead suggest planning tomorrow) but it seems it may be valuable to add some way to continue working/adding more sessions. I'll forward this to our Head of Product, Ben, to see whether there's something we can do to improve this scenario.
Paul Harker
@marcusataylor The more I use it, the more I like it... and the more I find bugs :) is there an email address that is better to send feedback too?
Marcus Taylor
@paul_harker haha brilliant! We have a private Slack community here with a bugs channel where many of our beta users share bugs as they find them https://app.slack.com/client/TL3... Alternatively, hello@sereneapp.com Thanks Paul! 😊
Sarthak Nayak
Solid app!! If you can add the ability to extend a session when it's finished that would be awesome. @marcusataylor
Marcus Taylor
@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?
Sarthak Nayak
@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!
Marcus Taylor
@sarthak Love it! Great idea Sarthak, will discuss this feedback with the team and hopefully get it in the next version 💪
Andrew Davies
Nice work - some great updates here.
Leadformly
Serene looks great. If it helps me with my day then its worth a look.
averysmithblue
I was just reading a research paper on increasing productivity. It looks like this application has been well thought out. I shall give Serene a go over the next few days. Great work!
Marcus Taylor
@averysmithblue Thanks! Hope you find it useful 🤞
Abhay Nawathey
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.
Marcus Taylor
@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 😊
James Iles
Would love to try this out, can I get referred for early access?
Marcus Taylor
@james_iles Absolutely - if you click the button at the top of this page that'll take you to a page to skip the waiting list 👍
Michele Patrassi
Really nice, I'm giving it a try! What about a timer between the sessions (I usually take 10 minutes break every 50)?
sarosh mirza
looks really cool. Congrats on the launch!
Marcus Taylor
@sarosh_mirza Thanks Sarosh!
Joseph Wood
Looks awesome! Is it invite only right now? I can't find a way to download it.
Benjamin Christine
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.
Joseph Wood
@benjieboo - I did, it's just taking me to the main page to request an invite. Let me try another web browser.
Benjamin Christine
@iamjmw Great to hear thats sorted. Would love to hear any feedback you might have.
Timmu Tõke
Excited to try this out!
Elis Davies
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?
Marcus Taylor
@elis_davies There is indeed!
grimmrad
@elis_davies @marcusataylor When will it be released. In this thread is nowhere a date of even the postings to be seen...