Slotty Time is a small app, on purpose. Here's the full kit — what each piece does, when to use it, and why it's shaped the way it is.
A routine is a saved list of timed steps with an emoji, a name, and an optional weekday schedule. Build one for your morning startup, one for end-of-day wrap-up, one for Monday planning. Once it's saved, you start the whole sequence in a single click from the menu bar — no opening files, no re-typing minutes.
Each routine can also carry a Focus hint string. It's a label you can read off later from a Shortcut to flip your Mac into a matching Focus mode. Slotty itself never toggles Focus — that's deliberate, more on this below.
Every routine is a list of steps. A step has a title ("Inbox sweep"), a duration in whole minutes ("10"), and a sort order. That minimalism is the point — a step you can describe in five words is a step you'll actually start.
From the routine editor you can add steps, delete steps, reorder them, and edit minutes either by typing or by tapping a quick-fill duration. Slotty rounds to whole minutes everywhere, because nobody has ever usefully said "let's give that 4 minutes 37 seconds".
A Quick Slot is a one-off focus block you launch straight from the menu bar. There's no saving, no naming, no schedule — type a number of minutes, hit start, and you're in a single-step run. The default emoji is ⚡️ because Quick Slots are about momentum, not paperwork.
Quick Slots use the same expiry behavior as routine steps: when they're up, the same little decision panel appears. The difference is that "Continue" simply ends the slot — there's no next step to advance to.
Use them when you've decided you'll spend exactly 15 minutes on something and you'd rather not negotiate with yourself about it.
When a step's time runs out, three things happen at once. The menu-bar countdown turns tomato red and starts counting up — a polite but unmissable signal that you're past the box. A local notification fires. And a small floating panel appears with your options.
The panel offers, depending on context:
Steps that are 3 minutes or shorter only show +1m, because
adding 25% of two minutes is silly. This kind of small respect for your
time is everywhere in Slotty.
If the expired step is the last one, the panel shifts: instead of "Continue", you'll see Done alongside Add More Time. Slotty knows when a routine is winding down.
A scheduled routine appears under Today only on its matching weekdays. Routines that don't match today get tucked under Other Routines — still one click away, just out of the spotlight. It's a tiny piece of automation that makes the dropdown feel curated for the day you're actually living.
Routines you don't want to schedule are simply unscheduled — they show up in the default list every day, and Slotty hides their weekday chips so the editor stays uncluttered.
Slotty's settings window is small on purpose. You can grant or open notification settings, and you can configure your "+ time" extension presets — either as percentages (the defaults: 10%, 25%, 50%) or as fixed minute values, whichever fits your brain better.
Importantly, the settings window is for editing, not for active timer control. While a slot is running, the menu bar is the one source of truth — settings stay out of the way.
Slotty exposes a small set of App Shortcuts you can use from the macOS Shortcuts app:
About Focus: Slotty deliberately doesn't toggle macOS Focus modes by itself. Instead, it stores an optional Focus hint string per routine. The intended pattern is to build your own Shortcut that starts a Slotty routine and sets a Focus mode. This way the combination stays under your control, which matters because Focus is a system-wide thing and people want it to behave their way, not ours.
A short, honest list of features Slotty doesn't have. We mention them so you know whether Slotty fits your day before you download it.
One small download. One menu bar slot. One properly focused day.
Download on the Mac App Store