Shishi: Focus & Pomodoro Timer

A shishi-odoshi is the bamboo fountain you have seen in Japanese gardens. Water runs into a tube until it can no longer hold the weight. The tube tips, empties, swings back, and strikes a stone. Kakon. It has been keeping time in temple gardens for four hundred years. Shishi puts a working one on your phone. The screen is a single ink painting. Water runs from a bamboo spout into the tube. After about half a minute the tube goes over all at once, pours, swings back, and knocks. Then it starts filling again. That is the whole app. There is no settings screen, no account, and nothing to optimise. THE BAMBOO IS NOT AN ANIMATION The tipping is simulated: the weight of the water against the balance of the tube on its axle. A brim-full tube only just outweighs its own tail, so it goes over reluctantly, then whips as the water runs to the low end, and comes back faster than it went out, empty and light. The rebound usually knocks a second time, quietly. Not one frame of it is a keyframe. WHILE THE SCREEN IS OFF A Live Activity keeps the remaining time on your Lock Screen, so you can put the phone down. The knocking itself only sounds while the app is open: iOS suspends an app once it is in the background, so no app can keep making a sound every thirty seconds. When the session ends, a single notification delivers the last knock, whether you are looking or not. GOOD FOR ・Reading, writing, drawing. Work where you aren't staring at a screen ・Anyone who bounced off Pomodoro apps and their hurrying numbers ・Keeping a quiet stretch of time with the phone face-up on the desk THE REST ・15, 25, 45 or 60 minutes ・No account, no sign-up, no settings screen ・No network of any kind. Nothing is collected ・One purchase. No subscription