I turned my Timeular Tracker into a macOS macropad

Created on April 10, 2026

2026   ·   hardware   macOS   Swift   Claude   hack   ·   side-projects

Show and tell time.

Timeular Tracker on desk Menu bar UI

What it does

I turned my Timeular Tracker (the 8-sided time-tracking dice) into a physical macropad for macOS. Flip the dice, switch macOS desktops. Side 1 is my main workspace, side 2 is a side project, side 3 is another. No keyboard shortcut to remember, just a satisfying physical flip. Every side can also be bound to launching an app, running a shell command, or opening a URL, all configured from a tiny menu bar popover.

How it got built

I had the Timeular charged but unused on my desk (I stopped paying the monthly subscription). I also had Claude Opus 4.6, and even though I don’t know Swift, Opus does.

  1. Scan. Asked Claude to find the Timeular over Bluetooth. It picked Python to explore the device.
  2. Prototype. Read the orientation signal on flip and wired it to shell commands. A working macropad in one script.
  3. Go native. Rewrote the whole thing in Swift/SwiftUI as a proper macOS menu bar app with CoreBluetooth.
  4. Ship it. Works.

Source on GitHub.