What’s new: Set Memory rules, idle time detection, task reminders

March is your lucky month! We kicked things off with a bang by making it possible for you to set rules around exactly what you want Memory to track. But it wasn’t all downhill from there. We know our users love to get really precise with logging their time, which is why our freshest tweaks to our idle time detection feature has gotten us really excited.

This month, we also added an easy-peasy way to set daily reminders to ensure you always get to your to-dos in time. Anyway, enough preamble from us. Let’s take a deeper dive into what’s new around these parts.

Set rules around what you want Memory to track

With the Memory App, Timely can produce a completely objective record of your work day with zero manual effort. While that record stays completely private, there may still be certain activities you’d rather weren’t picked up at all — especially if you use your computer for both your professional and personal lives.

That’s why you can now set up simple rules to ignore or rewrite specific activities before anything is uploaded to your private timeline. For any of this to happen, you need to have the Memory app installed on your computer — the automatic heart powering Timely. Once you’re signed in to Memory, head to your settings to get started. There are two types of rules you can set:

Ignore an activity — prevent certain website, app or document activities from being picked up.
Rewrite an activity — change the page, app, or document title for specific activities.

Ignore rules lets you blacklist activities that you never want to see inside Timely. This could be an irrelevant app or website that you only ever use in your personal time, or a sensitive document title that for privacy reasons cannot exist in the cloud. (Those of you using non-Chrome browsers will want to check this out if you want Timely to ignore any incognito window activity.)

Rewrite rules let you adjust how certain tracked activities appear in your timeline. This is great for any activities containing sensitive information that you still want to record to your timeline. To set these up, follow the same process detailed above, but select “Change the memory to” and enter the activity title or URL that you want to see in Timely.

When you set a rule, you either stop or rewrite certain activities locally on your computer before they are ever uploaded to our servers. That means any sensitive information that you don’t want to leave your computer never leaves your computer!

Learn more about setting up rules in Memory

Create more accurate time entries with auto-enabled idle time detection

At Memory HQ, we’re all big fans of setting aside time for meals and short breaks throughout the day. So, go ahead — have a good stretch, refill that coffee cup, take a quick stroll outside. (Spring is so close, we can almost taste it.) To prevent any accidental logging of time you spend away from your computer, though, we’ve enabled Idle Time Detection by default within your Memory app.

You can disable this in your settings. But this feature is particularly useful if you’re looking to get a really accurate picture of how your project time is spent, so we recommend hanging onto it. Idle time will kick in once your computer’s been idle for 15 minutes, meaning that memories within that time period won’t show on your timelines. You’ll then be given the option to create a manual entry for the time you were away (if you stepped out to take a call, for example). Note: For now, the “Prompt to log idle time” is only available to Memory for Chrome and Memory for Windows users.

Make sure nothing slips through the cracks with upcoming task reminders

Prefer to be notified at the precise moment that you need to do something? Setting email or mobile reminders for upcoming tasks is a really simple way to keep track of all the pressing things on your to-do list for the day ahead. Here’s how you do it:

Head on over to the Notifications tab in Timely.
Navigate to “When I have tasks on today’s agenda”.
Check/uncheck any of the boxes to toggle email and mobile notifications on/off, like so:

And that’s it! We’ll send out a clear daily update (Mon-Fri, excluding weekends) on exactly what you need to focus your time on that day. (Just remember to thank your past self for being so nice and thoughtful to your future self when you get nudged about something urgent you had completely forgotten about. 😬)

Itty-bitty Timely updates

Quite a while back, we shared with you some big updates to our subscription plans. Teams that signed up to Timely prior to November 2020 are now considered to be on a Legacy plan.

There’s a brand new version of the Memory macOS app — get the update now! (Psst: Memory for Mac users can also get the update by opening up the Memory app and selecting Settings Check for Updates.)

Before you go...

If you’re interested in learning more about any new (or oldie but goodie 😉) Timely features, we’re constantly updating our support center with new help articles. Have a look for yourself! But most importantly, thank you for being there with us every step of the way. Your requests and feedback constantly inspire us to make Timely even better. So please, keep those comments coming — we’ll be right here, plugging away.