Why Does a Timer App Need My Location? It doesn't

Today there is no breakfast, just sweat and a protein shake to recover.

When I visit the gym I am usually in a class or an organised session. I do not really go through my own free will and desire until recently as I get back into fighting. I wanted and what I found was there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of gym apps. More importantly, they are all great.

I just need a timer, a simple timer app.

I tried a few training apps and after the four screens to set up, not sure why this app needs my location, to see the app load up and then show me so many ads. The other day I was in the gym doing rounds on the punch bag and wanted a three‑minute timer. I tried with the Clock app and just set the timer, but the timer starts and alerts at the end and the screen turns off after some seconds so I do not know how far through I am. I tried via Siri and let us not get started on how bad that went. iOS 27, please make Siri as good as it looks you will.

So it was time to build a gym timer for me. Personalised Software on Demand again.

The Brief

Set round timers, set rest between rounds, and give me an audio or visual cue when I have ten seconds left. If I wear my AirPods I want to hear the cues without looking. I want the screen to stay on during a round (unlike the Apple timer app) so I can see how much pain I have left to suffer, with a bold font so I can rest it further away and still read it.

Deliberately no login, no upload, no account. No workouts database, no social, no ads. I can set different round lengths so I can move between skipping and the punch bag, but the core is a clean, dependable timer with useful sounds. If it can say “X minutes left” each minute, great. If I can start, stop and pause via Siri, great (Nice to have, at this point).

Open it and you land on three fields and one big button.

• Round length. I tap to pick three minutes, or two, or five.

• Rest length. I set thirty seconds, or a minute if I am feeling kind to myself.

• Rounds. I choose how many I am doing today.

I hit Start. The screen stays awake. The timer fills the page in a big, high‑contrast number I can read from the floor. At ten seconds from the end I hear a short beep. At zero I get a clearer tone, then the rest timer starts. Between rounds I get a brief set of beeps so I know when to get my hands back up. If I want to pause I tap anywhere. If I need to reset, I hit Stop and I am back to the three fields.

I can wear my AirPods and keep my phone on the bench.

I give you RingSide

A beautiful iOS app that does what it says on the tin but also looks pretty slick, as I had wifi deployments enabled the app is already on my phone and I have used it.

Why this matters

I have argued before many times that Personalised Software on Demand is the storm coming. Tiny tools made to fit a person, not a market. We are surrounded by excellent general apps that try to be the gym for everyone. They are right to do that. But for my punch‑bag rounds, a clean three‑minute timer with one good beep beats a catalogue of features and an onboarding funnel.

This is where things get interesting. The distance between “annoyance” and “my own tool” keeps shrinking.

This time I also created a video ad with the app again with AI and it’s pretty cool if I do say so myself.

▶ Watch the video on Substack