One of the aspects that attracted me to the Mac and Apple products in particular was the way they dealt with notifications and encouraged an simpler interface with fewer distractions. Of course you can achieve similar results with Windows and android, and you can also make your apple devices over complicated and very distracting, but in my experience more developers are trying to create simple interfaces for Apple devices and help handle distractions.
With that in mind, enter Quitter a new (free) Mac app from Marco Arment that does one simple thing but does it well.
What is Quitter
Quitter is an app that lets you set up rules to automatically log out of (or hide) applications on your Mac. This saves processing power and RAM on your computer but more importantly, it helps you avoid distractions and clean up your interface making it a better, less distracting experience using your Mac.
For me, I’ve added two simple rules which have really helped. Slack (where we have our ChurchMag back channel) and Mail.app. I try to log in and focus full on these services rather than just keep them going in the background with distractions and notification popping up during the day. Quitter logs me out after 5 minutes of inactivity, preventing distractions and encouraging better more disciplines email habits.
Some other applications you might want to consider are
- Skype (have you ever noticed that if you leave Skype logged in, people try to call you at the worst moment)
- Tweetbot
- iMessages
But you could also possibly use this for your writing application to encourage you to follow a more focused writing habit (like those new applications where the writing disappears if you stop typing for too long. This would close your app if you don’t use it for a while.)
One of the really nice touches of Quitter is that you can change the inactive times on different applications which really helps you make the application suit your habits. It is very basic but that’s it’s strength, it doesn’t need to be complicated.
Wrapping Up
Quitter is a great app that does something so simple and helps save you from thinking about a boring repetitive task.
Design: 4 stars
Features: 3 stars
Performance: 5 stars
Value for Money: 5 stars
Quitter supports OS X
You can find Quitter here
[Scrabble image via jeffdjevdet via Compfight cc]
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