Where did the day go?
Now you know.
A privacy-first menu bar app for Mac that automatically tracks where your time goes — no timers to start, no projects to pick. Plus a real break timer and stay-awake mode so long jobs keep running while you step away.
100 h free trial · break timer & lid-down free forever · 3 devices · One-time payment
The problem with most Mac time trackers
You don't need a coach.
You need an honest log.
Manual timers you forget to start
If tracking depends on remembering to start tracking, you don't have data — you have wishes. Toggl, Harvest, the stopwatch in your menu bar — same problem. Stop forgetting.
Subscriptions that "score your productivity"
You don't need an algorithm telling you that Slack is "low value". You already know. Pay $96–240 / year for a number that confirms what you suspected — or don't.
Cloud sync you didn't ask for
Window titles. URLs. Meeting names. All of it, on someone else's database. Behind whatever passwords and audit trails the vendor decides to maintain. Until they don't.
Records automatically. Lets you look at it. End of feature list.
Open the lid in the morning, the tracker is already running. No timer to start, no project to pick, no algorithm grading you, no weekly insights email. Drag onto a slice of the timeline — you see what was actually open. That's the product.
How it works
Three steps. No setup. No account.
Install & sign in to nothing.
Drag Timex into Applications. No account, no email, no onboarding survey. Grant Accessibility once and the tracker starts.
Forget about it.
Timex sits in the menu bar at <1% CPU. The pill shows your current app + today total. It quietly logs every app, window, and browser tab — second by second.
See your day. Take a break. Keep it running.
Click the pill. Drag onto a slice of the timeline. Tap "Did it" when you stretch. Flip Stay Awake on before you close the lid on a long inference run.
Automatic, second-by-second
Drag on the timeline. Get the truth.
Open the lid and the tracker is already running. Every minute of every day is drawn as a stacked bar in per-app category colors. Drag onto a slice and the totals below filter to that window. Click a bar to isolate one app. Click empty space to clear.
- No manual timer to start, no project to pick, no forgetting — the loop just runs
- Second-by-second precision so quick app switches actually show up
- Hover anywhere → tooltip with the exact app, window title, URL and clock range
App → Window → URL
Drill into the actual rabbit hole.
The app totals list expands. For each app you see the top 15 window titles. For browsers you see per-domain time, then the actual URLs. Drill-ins are instant — even on a year of data.
- Tap an app chip or bar → that app auto-expands and everything else dims
- Range picker: Today / Yesterday / Last 7 / Last 30 / This week / This month / custom
- Active-tab URL read from the browser via Accessibility — Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Arc and more, no extra permission
- Right-click any window title to turn it into a keyword rule; export the day, week or any range as CSV — daily summary or the full log — straight from the header.
Ask your day a question
Works with Claude, Cursor and any MCP client — locally.
Timex ships its own MCP server. Ask “how much Zoom this week?”, “what did I do Tuesday afternoon?”, “make github.com count as focus”, or “log the 2pm call”. Your AI runs the same tools the UI uses, against the file on your Mac. The server is off by default, bound to localhost, and protected by a bearer token.
- 16 tools for summaries, search, rules, entries, export, pause, and breaks
- One-click Claude Desktop setup, plus copyable snippets for Claude Code, Cursor, Zed, and VS Code
- Binds locally by default (configurable) and requires a bearer token; a connected client can see your window titles and URLs
A score you write yourself
A focus score, on your terms.
Every app and website rolls up into a category, and every category carries a weight you set — from −100% (waste) to +100% (deep focus). Timex weights your day by your own numbers into one 0–100 score, at the top of Today and in the menu bar. No cloud, no algorithm, no verdict — just your rubric, totalled. 50 is neutral.
- Website rules cover subdomains and split a single browser: github.com is focus, youtube.com is waste — and a keyword like Jira in a window title can override the app, because you said so
- Tune every weight, add your own categories, right-click any app to recategorize — your history re-scores live
- Computed on your Mac from data that never leaves it — a lens you can ignore — or, if you ask, one daily digest and per-category limits as plain macOS notifications. No streak, no nag, no email.
Same browser. One site is focus, one is waste — because you said so.
Counts what it can't see
Calls, videos and time away — kept honest.
Idle detection used to drop a one-hour call after two quiet minutes. Now audio and mic activity in the app in front keep the clock running. And when you've been away, Timex offers the gap back as a manual entry instead of pretending it never happened.
- Audio or mic activity in the frontmost app keeps calls and videos counting through quiet stretches
- After 5+ minutes away, an away card lets you add the gap as time — or dismiss it
- Add manual entries with a category for meetings, calls and offline work
Track only what you mean to
Your rules for what gets recorded.
Automatic doesn't have to mean everything, all the time. Exclude apps you never want in the log, skip private browser windows where the browser exposes them, and set a weekly schedule so Timex records only when you mean it to.
- Exclude any app from tracking
- Private Chromium and Firefox windows are skipped; Safari does not expose a private-window marker
- Set a weekly schedule; the menu bar shows “Outside tracking hours” when the clock is off
Take a real break
A break that does what it says.
When the timer fires, Timex shows a full-screen card deck: hydration, mindfulness, and stretches you can actually do at your desk. Tap "Did it" or "Skip" on each. The countdown lifts only when you answer them.
- Real exercises with photographs and short, evidence-based instructions
- Three categories — Hydration (cyan), Mindfulness (coral), Body (amber)
- Pauses when you're idle so a long meeting doesn't get unfairly chopped up
Pour a glass. Take a sip.
Visible water gets drunk.
- Pour a full glass.
- Sip slowly, breathing.
- Notice the cool.
Window gaze, 20-20-20
Eyes off the screen, onto something far away.
- Pick a point at least 20 ft away.
- Soft focus, no staring.
- Hold 20 seconds.
Over-chair thoracic opener
Drapes the upper back over the chair edge.
- Sit at the front edge.
- Interlace fingers behind head.
- Arch & hold 5 s. ×8.
Stretch, breathe, look away — Timex unlocks once the timer ends.
Stay-awake mode
One toggle. Long jobs survive.
Flip Stay Awake on and Timex holds a kernel idle-sleep assertion (the same one behind caffeinate -i) until you flip it off. Your downloads finish, your Ollama / LM Studio inference keeps running, and Timex keeps logging — even when you walk away.
- Persists across app relaunches — toggle once and forget. Timex re-engages on every launch, including auto-launch at login
- Display still sleeps and the screen still locks — only system idle-sleep is held off, so battery + privacy stay sane
- Plug in + close the lid → clamshell mode works. On battery + lid closed, macOS force-sleeps regardless (kernel limitation, no app can override that)
caffeinate -i Same kernel idle-sleep assertion as this CLI, with a menu bar pill so you cannot forget. The display still sleeps, the screen still locks — only system idle-sleep is held off.More than a time tracker
Three things.
One menu bar.
The three Mac tools that always end up next to each other in the menu bar — the tracker, the break nudger, and the wake-keeper — now share one slot, one SQLite file, one pause button, and one privacy posture.
Records your day automatically. No timer to start.
1 Hz sampling of the frontmost app, focused window, and active browser tab — no remembering, no timers, no project picker — and when it can't see something, you can log it by hand. Drag onto a slice of the timeline to drill in. One SQLite file. The receipts.
Reminds you to take real breaks.
Hydration, mindfulness, and stretches you can actually do at your desk. Pomodoro / hourly / custom cadence. Pauses when you're idle so meetings don't get unfairly chopped up.
Keeps long jobs running while you step away.
One toggle, persists forever. Timex holds a kernel idle-sleep assertion (same as caffeinate -i) so your Ollama / LM Studio / overnight sync keeps working. Plug in + close the lid → clamshell still goes. Display keeps sleeping normally; only system idle-sleep is held off.
Privacy by architecture, not by promise
Your activity stays on this Mac. Full stop.
Timex doesn't have a server. There's no API endpoint to "accidentally" leak to. There's no account that can be breached. There's one folder in your Library, and that's it. Block the app at the firewall — nothing stops working.
What Timex records
- The app you have in front
- The title of the window you are looking at
- The website tab in your browser (for supported browsers, with your permission)
- When each segment started, ended, and how long you were active in it
What it never touches
- Audio
- Keystrokes
- Mouse positions
- Screen pixels or screenshots
- Clipboard contents
- Anything from passwords / banking / health apps you treat as private
~/Library/Application Support/io.muvon.timex/00none — there isn't an account systemSettings → Export → CSV — every row, every timeblock timex with Little Snitch — nothing stops workingHow Timex compares
Same job. Different stance.
The leading time trackers on Mac are subscription-backed cloud services. Timex is the opposite. Pick the one whose tradeoffs you can live with.
| Timex Local · One-time | Timing.app | Rize.io | RescueTime | Screen Time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100% local — no cloud | |||||
| No account required | |||||
| Per-second sampling | |||||
| Per-window title capture | |||||
| Per-tab browser URL | |||||
| Drag-to-select on timeline | |||||
| Built-in break timer with video exercises | |||||
| Stay-awake mode (clamshell on AC) | |||||
| Single SQLite file you own | |||||
| Menu bar lightweight UI | |||||
| Keeps counting during calls & video | |||||
| Keyword rules by window title / URL | |||||
| Manual entries & away reconciliation | |||||
| CSV export of any range | |||||
| Daily limits & digest — local notifications | |||||
| Exclude apps · skip private windows · schedule | |||||
| MCP server for AI clients — local | |||||
| Pricing model | One-time | $96+/yr | $120/yr | $78/yr | Free |
Comparisons sourced from public websites and pricing as of August 2026. Things change — tell us if a row is out of date.
Questions & answers
The honest details.
No. Timex never sends activity data over an outgoing network connection. Your data lives in a single file at ~/Library/Application Support/io.muvon.timex/ and stays there. No analytics, no telemetry, no account. Block its outgoing traffic with Little Snitch or your firewall and watch it fall completely silent. The MCP server is local too, and only a client you explicitly connect can read it.
Open laptop. Close laptop.
Now you'll know where it went.
Time tracker, break timer, and stay-awake mode — one menu bar pill, one SQLite file, one-time price. 100 hours of tracking on the free trial; the break timer and lid-down mode stay free forever.
brew install muvon/tap/timexmacOS 15+ · Apple Silicon (M1 or later) · No account required