Goal System

The Goal System helps you turn time-tracking insights into action. Set daily goals, track your progress, and build lasting habits.

Creating Goals

Tap "New Goal" on the Goals page. You'll need to set the following:

  • Goal Name — e.g., "Code for more than 4 hours daily" or "Social media under 1 hour"
  • Goal Type — Increase or Decrease (see below)
  • Metric — What to track (category, app, task, or total usage time)
  • Target Duration — The number of minutes you want to reach
  • Period — Daily or weekly

Increase vs. Decrease Goals

CatchTime supports two types of goals:

Increase Goals

  • You want to spend more time on something
  • Example: "Code for more than 4 hours daily", "Study for at least 1 hour daily"
  • Achieved when actual usage meets or exceeds the target

Decrease Goals

  • You want to spend less time on something
  • Example: "Social media under 1 hour daily", "Gaming under 30 minutes daily"
  • Achieved when actual usage is at or below the target

Progress Tracking and Streaks

Real-time Progress

  • Each goal card displays a progress ring that updates in real time
  • See at a glance how close you are to hitting your target

Streaks

  • Consecutive days of achieving a goal are tracked as a Streak
  • For example, if you hit your "4 hours of coding" goal for 7 days in a row, your Streak is 7
  • Missing a day resets the Streak to 0
  • Your all-time longest Streak is permanently recorded, motivating you to beat your record

Goal Templates

Not sure what goals to set? CatchTime offers preset templates:

  • Templates are designed around common productivity scenarios
  • Use them as-is or customize them to fit your needs

AI Suggestions

CatchTime's AI can recommend goals based on your usage data from the past week:

  • AI analyzes your app usage patterns and time allocation
  • Recommends 3-5 personalized goal suggestions
  • Each suggestion comes with a rationale
  • Accept a suggestion with one tap or skip it

History Review

The goal detail page provides rich historical data:

Bar Chart

  • Shows your actual usage time for each day over a period
  • Days where you achieved the goal are shown in green; missed days in red
  • Clearly see how your performance fluctuates

Heatmap

  • Similar to GitHub's contribution heatmap
  • Color intensity indicates achievement level
  • Spot at a glance which days went well and which need improvement

Home Page Goal Cards

On the CatchTime home page, you'll see mini progress cards for your daily goals:

  • Shows today's progress for all active goals
  • Get a quick overview without navigating to the Goals page
  • Tap a card to jump to the goal details

Learn More

  • Insights — View detailed data behind your goals
  • Tasks — Combine with the task system to track work progress
  • App Limits — Use limits to enforce Decrease goals