Bearing
Polski
At work — am I doing what I planned? And in life — am I neglecting someone, or something, I love? Bearing keeps your day on plan on the Mac, and in life it rings when what matters gets too little. It measures because a plan is easy to mistake for a fact. No account. No cloud.
Gauges, sample data, Wednesday evening: one of five goals on target.
The Today list is your plan for the day: tasks with estimates, projects under each client. Tasks from Jira and Linear arrive on their own. You start the clock from a task — so Bearing knows whether you’re on what you planned, and how long it really took.
Today list, sample data: five tasks, two done; one task from Jira is running, one from Linear is waiting.
The Today panel puts the plan, your meetings and what actually happened on one axis. Above the red arrow: on plan, other, gaps. Below it, what’s left, and the dot says whether it fits. A short “Still working on X?” brings you back to the plan before the day gets away.
Today panel, sample data, Wednesday 12:20: 2 h 45 on plan, 45 minutes of gaps, 4 h 40 to the end of the day, the plan fits.
Every part of life you care about gets a gauge; sleep and workouts are measured by Apple Health on your iPhone. The gauge doesn’t judge how good an evening was — nobody can measure that. It only says how much there was, and how long ago. On Wednesday, one of five is on course; the green dot by workouts: you’re catching up.
Research: why the gauge doesn’t score quality ↓
Gauges, sample data, Wednesday evening: work too high, family too low, sleep too low, workouts too low but rising, love on target.
It feels like there’s plenty of good time for the people close to you. The gauge says: long ago, and not much — needle to the left, red dot, the last seven days worse than the seven before. Next to it, work: too much. An alarm, not a grade: hey, you’re neglecting her, them, your passions. And you see what you get in return.
Research: watching your progress helps you get there ↓
Gauge, sample data: “My family” is too low and falling, so the dot is red.
Now and then, one question: how do you feel? Pick a square — pleasant or not, lots of energy or little. On the Mac it’s part of the same short check-in; on iPhone and Apple Watch it’s two taps.
Research: naming a feeling can soften it ↓
Mood grid, sample data: on Wednesday evening, slightly unpleasant, low energy.
After a few weeks of answers, Bearing compares how you felt with your usual for that hour — after family time, a Duolingo lesson, or work for each client. Work isn’t one thing: one client lifts you, another drains you. It shows what came after, not what caused it. On iPhone.
Mood, sample data. What helps: North Studio, within 3 hours, energy 0.5 above your usual; my family, later the same day, pleasantness 0.6 above; French on Duolingo, within 3 hours, pleasantness 0.3 above, tentative. What hurts: Harbor Clinic, the next day, energy 0.4 below your usual.
During your check-in hours it asks briefly — “Still working on X?” — and waits for a pause in your typing. Check-ins are optional, and you can mute them.
It notices when you step away, knows your meetings, and takes sleep and workouts from Apple Health and lessons from Duolingo. Forgot something? It asks when you’re back, and Close Day shows the gaps one at a time.
Research: a question in the moment · rebuilding a day later ↓
Sources, sample: Mac, Calendar, Apple Health, Duolingo, Jira and Linear on; Apple Watch being switched on.
Add or fix any entry and switch any source on or off. Time Bearing isn’t sure about is marked ~ and stays out of the totals until you count it.
Nobody profiles you — no account, no analytics, no ads, no server of ours. Sync with iPhone is off until you turn it on, then end-to-end encrypted. And if you want, your own AI — Claude, Codex or a local model — can read it through MCP.
Who sees your data, sample: you see everything on your Mac; your iPhone only with sync on, encrypted; your AI assistant only if you connect it through MCP; Bearing’s developer and advertisers see nothing. An uncertain half hour is counted as work.
Not everything at once: one change a week. Move an evening, keep a weekend morning — by Sunday, work and family are back on course, three of five. The gauges didn’t do that. They only showed that it happened.
But what matters most is how you feel. On Sunday evening, your answer sits higher on the grid.
Research: why the green zone is a range ↓
All goals, sample data, Sunday evening: three of five on target; sleep and workouts still too low, workouts rising. Mood: pleasant, more energy.
Every day keeps its history on your Mac: when, for which client, on which task, with your note if you left one. You can edit any of it.
Day history, sample data, Tuesday, October 20: five entries between 8:30 and 16:10, one with a note.
Each Area is a client. At month end, export Excel, PDF or CSV — without an evening of reconstruction.
Sample October timesheet: North Studio 59 hours, Harbor Clinic 43, Kite Labs 21; 3.5 uncertain hours not counted.
Each device does what it is good at, and they keep one history between them.
It can ask what you’re doing. That’s optional — and it’s why the hours are true.
To be honest: it asks more of you than a tracker that guesses. That is the point — it is built to help you do things smarter, in line with what matters to you, not to count hours.
Bearing is free. If it helps, you can leave a tip inside the app.
Across 138 experiments with about 20,000 people, monitoring progress toward a goal made reaching it more likely — clearly more so when the progress was recorded and visible. Measuring in the background alone isn’t enough; that’s why Bearing asks, and asks you to close the day.
Harkin et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2016 · doi:10.1037/bul0000025
An iPhone app asked 2,250 people at random moments what they were doing and how they felt. Their minds were elsewhere in almost half of the answers — and they were less happy then. Bearing’s short check-in is a chance to notice, not a grade.
Killingsworth & Gilbert, Science, 2010 · doi:10.1126/science.1192439
Going back over yesterday episode by episode gave results close to asking in the moment. Close Day follows the same idea: one gap at a time.
Kahneman et al., Science, 2004 · doi:10.1126/science.1103572
In brain scans, putting a feeling into words lowered the amygdala’s response to upsetting images.
Lieberman et al., Psychological Science, 2007 · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
In six experiments, counting walks, reading or colouring increased the quantity but lowered the enjoyment. That’s why the family or passion gauge is an alarm, not a scoreboard: it says “long ago, and not much”, and doesn’t rate the evening.
Etkin, Journal of Consumer Research, 2016 · doi:10.1093/jcr/ucv095
Among people who track their sleep, 3 to 14 in 100 worry about the numbers enough to sleep worse; doctors described such cases as early as 2017. That’s why Bearing does the measuring for you, keeps its question short, and the green zone is a range, not a perfect score.
Jahrami et al., Brain Sciences, 2024 · doi:10.3390/brainsci14111123 · Baron et al., Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2017 · doi:10.5664/jcsm.6472
Bearing is not a medical device. It doesn’t promise health or happiness — it shows you where your days go.
Only you can answer that. Bearing shows whether your days go where you want them to, and how you feel after them — what to change is your call.
Take a bearing.
Bearing is in testing with a small group. Want to be one of them? Write a few words about how you work — I pick the testers myself and reply with a TestFlight invite.
Request an inviteOr write to tests@takebearing.app. No mailing list — one person reads every message and replies.