What’s New In TimeTune 5.1

TimeTune 5.1 is already here! 🥳

This version brings with it more Material Design 3 changes, new interface colors and several usability improvements. It also addresses an important bug introduced by the latest Android 16 update 😮

Let’s see the changes in detail:

MORE MATERIAL DESIGN 3

If you remember our previous changelog for version 5.0, you’ll recall that we made a full migration from Material Design 2 to Material Design 3.

But even after the migration, some screens still seemed to be a mix of both design languages 🤔

The thing is Material Design 3 puts a great emphasis on surface colors as the main way to differentiate content in apps. However, many of our screens still relied on lines to separate information.

That’s why we decided to fully embrace the surface metaphor:

If we were happy with the initial migration, we are now over the moon! With these changes, the app has a truly modern look, is more pleasant to use and screens are much less overwhelming.

In the end, we realized that lines should be used sparingly (for example, to highlight specific elements like the current block in the schedule, which now stands out better than before).

Do you like the new design?

NEW INTERFACE COLORS AND PICKER

Premium users have now two more color options for the interface: orange and brown.

We think the orange theme looks especially awesome with the new design changes 😍

We also took the opportunity to implement a new theme color selector:

The new selector is clearer and shows in a single screen how each color will affect light and dark modes.

SELECTING ACTIVITIES FOR BLOCKS

Selecting activities for blocks is now easier (and faster) than ever. Previously, the app showed a simple dialog with all the activities and a button to create a new activity on the fly.

Now the app shows a full-screen selector (which, incidentally, is faster than the dialog):

The new selector has two added benefits:

• You can search activities on the fly.
• You can sort activities on the fly.

And there’s more! When you create a new activity on the fly and that activity already exists, the app shows the existing activity and allows you to choose it immediately:

These usability improvements make selecting activities much more efficient now ✨

PERMISSION CHECKS

There are a few situations where an Android app can lose its permissions. For example, when transferring your apps to a new device or when the app hasn’t been used in a long time.

If that happens, you may think the app is still working correctly when in fact it isn’t.

To mitigate that problem, we added two new checks to the main screen: a notification permission check and a Google Drive permission check for automatic backups.

If you lose one of those permissions, the app will warn you immediately:

The settings screen will also show warning indicators in the corresponding sections:

The goal with these checks is to minimize undesired disruptions with the app.

ANDROID 5.0 NOT POSSIBLE ANYMORE

Unfortunately, Android 5.0 doesn’t support some features anymore (mostly, features related to the new design language) 😢

We always try to support old versions as much as possible, but sometimes it’s not technically feasible.

Now the app can be installed on devices with Android 5.1 and higher (if you have it in an Android 5.0 device, it will keep working but it won’t update to new versions).

Sorry about that 🙏

WIDGET BUG

Our previous version already addressed some bugs happening in Android 16 🐛

However, a new Android 16 update (QPR1) introduced another bug in the widget, leaving the widget totally blank.

If you are on Android 16, you may have noticed this problem in several apps.

TimeTune 5.1 solves this bug (and other minor bugs not related to Android 16).

MORE FEATURES ON THE WAY

Once again, like in the previous version, we wanted to wait a bit more before publishing this update. But that problem with the widget forced us to push version 5.1 to the public channel as soon as possible.

So stay tuned for more updates! 📢

OTHER CHANGES

As always, this new update includes additional, secondary changes:

• Improved animations for predictive back gesture.
• Improved contrast for dialogs and sheets in dark mode.
• App font slightly thicker for better readability.
• Pop-up menus have now rounded corners.
• New activity selector is also used in “Settings / Interface / Default activity”.
• The app now shows all external calendars, even if they are not enabled for synchronization.
• Library updates.
• Internal improvements.
• New translation: Korean.

We hope you like the new changes in TimeTune 5.1! 😀

(Top illustration by gstudioimagen, on Freepik)