Veranda

A lightweight, beautiful productivity app with timers, stopwatches, and todos. Built with Rust and Tauri.

Features

• Timers: Create countdown timers with custom durations and labels
• Stopwatches: Track elapsed time with lap recording
• Todos: Manage tasks with projects, labels, and status tracking
• Background Art: Set custom background images from Pinterest URLs
• Notifications: Get notified when timers complete (with sound)
• CLI Interface: Control Veranda from the command line
• Background Daemon: Timers and stopwatches continue running even when the GUI is closed

Installation

macOS

1. Download the latest .dmg from Releases
2. Open the DMG and drag Veranda to your Applications folder
3. Launch Veranda from Applications

From Source

Requirements:

• Rust 1.77.2 or later
• Node.js 18 or later
• macOS 10.13+ (for macOS builds)

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/veranda.git
cd veranda

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the frontend
npm run build

# Build the app
cd src-tauri
cargo build --release

The built app will be at src-tauri/target/release/veranda.

Usage

GUI

Launch Veranda to open the main window with three tabs:

• Timers: Create and manage countdown timers
• Stopwatches: Track time and record laps
• Todos: Manage your tasks

Keyboard shortcuts:

• Cmd+T: Create new timer
• Cmd+S: Create new stopwatch
• Cmd+D: Create new todo

CLI

Veranda can be controlled from the command line:

# List all timers
./veranda timer list

# Create a new timer
./veranda timer create -l "Pomodoro" -d 1500

# Start a timer
./veranda timer start -i <timer-id>

# Pause a timer
./veranda timer pause -i <timer-id>

# List stopwatches
./veranda stopwatch list

# Create and start a stopwatch
./veranda stopwatch create -l "Work Session"
./veranda stopwatch start -i <stopwatch-id>

# Manage todos
./veranda todo list
./veranda todo add -t "Buy groceries"
./veranda todo done -i <todo-id>

# Run daemon only (no GUI)
./veranda daemon

Setting up CLI Alias

Add to your .zshrc or .bashrc:

alias veranda="/Applications/Veranda.app/Contents/MacOS/veranda"

Then reload your shell:

source ~/.zshrc  # or ~/.bashrc

Data Storage

All data is stored in SQLite at ~/veranda-data/:

• veranda.db: Main database with timers, stopwatches, and todos
• images/: Downloaded background images

This location is configurable by modifying DATA_DIR in src-tauri/src/config.rs.

Development

Project Structure

veranda/
├── src-ui/              # React frontend
│   ├── components/      # UI components
│   ├── stores/         # Zustand state management
│   └── hooks/          # Custom React hooks
├── src-tauri/          # Rust backend
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── background/ # Background service daemon
│   │   ├── db/         # Database operations
│   │   ├── models/     # Data models
│   │   └── services/   # Image and sound services
│   └── icons/          # App icons
└── scripts/            # Build scripts

Running in Development Mode

# Terminal 1: Start the dev server
npm run dev

# Terminal 2: Run the Tauri app
cd src-tauri
cargo tauri dev

Building for Production

# Build frontend
npm run build

# Build the app bundle
cd src-tauri
cargo tauri build

The bundled app will be in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Technologies

• Frontend: React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS + Zustand
• Backend: Rust + Tauri v2
• Database: SQLite via rusqlite
• Notifications: macOS Notification Center
• Audio: macOS System Sounds (via afplay)

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

Acknowledgments

• Built with Tauri
• Icons generated with custom tooling
• Inspired by minimalist productivity apps