Posts Tagged → timing

Timing: Track Your Time Without Timers; Now Even on iOS! (Sponsor)

Time is the most valuable resource you have. It’s the only resource you can’t get more of.

Yet, many of us don’t track our time. And the reason is usually simple: it’s cumbersome, and it’s way too easy to forget.

Not anymore! Timing is an app for your Mac that automatically tracks your time, no timers needed. It’s smart, it’s beautiful, and it’s easy to use.

Just download and install Timing and it’ll start recording how much time you spend on each app, document and website you use.

And with the latest update, Timing will now import your iPhone and iPad usage from Screen Time as well! This means you’ll get the full picture of how you spend your time, across all your devices.

I use Timing because of how easy it is to get good data. The app is smart. It learns how to categorize time for you (with a bit of help from you), and the reports are beautiful. I put screenshots of my Timing reports in my weekly/monthly reviews in Day One.

If you’ve tried time-tracking before and gave up on it, give Timing a try. It literally does the work for you.

Creating an AppleScript to Automate Timing Entries (MacSparky Labs)

I’ve had a few members ask me for help automating setting timers in the Timing App. Since the Timing App supports AppleScript, this gave me an opportunity to explain how I build an AppleScript by cobbling together bits of code I find on the Internet. If you’d like to learn how to build and execute a simple AppleScript, this one is for you.… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Timing App Updates to Use Screen Time Data

Time tracking can pay a lot of dividends when you are trying to figure out how you really spend your time. The problem, of course, is getting good data. Timing is a Mac application that automatically tracks your time based on your current activity. It’s a smart app, that gets even smarter with a little training.

But it’s never really had an answer to tracking time on your mobile devices, until now. Yesterday Timing released a new update that lets Timing import your iPhone and iPad usage from Screen Time. The trick is that Timing will read the Screen Time data in the background (once you give it permission) and then incorporate that data with the rest of your Timing data. Daniel Alm, the developer, wrote up a full explanation.

The solution is really clever, but I wish it didn’t have to be. Just like Apple makes it easy to share your health data with third-party apps, they should also let you share your Screen Time data.

Timing for Stress-Free Time Tracking (Sponsor)

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing, the stress-free solution to Time Tracking. Timing tracks your time automatically, so you don’t have to.

Tracking time, for me, is actually an antidote to stress. When I have a better idea of how I’m sending my time, I can be much more intentional going forward. But the process of time-tracking can be stressful in itself. That’s where Timing comes in. You install it on your Mac, teach it some rules, and it does the work for you. It gives you accurate time-tracking data without you having to press any buttons like a monkey in a lab.

Timings Developer is dedicated to helping you get the benefit of time tracking without the stress of time tracking. He’s even written a helpful articles to help you understand these challenges and how to address them:

Time Management & Mental Health – Create the work-life balance you need

Timing truly is an app designed to help you stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work. It is the easiest way I’ve found to get accurate, stress-free time-tracking information. I recommend it. Check out Timing today.

Timing App Update




Timing, a prior sponsor of MacSparky.com, is out with un update. If you don’t already know, Timing automatically tracks which applications, documents and domains you spend time withs that you can quickly figure out what you’re spending (and wasting) your time on. With this update, they’ve replaced the “Review” and “Details” screens with one unified, and customizable, “Activities” screen. They’ve also got plenty of usability improvements for you to streamline your time-tracking workflow even more:

  • You can now start and stop timers right from the toolbar of the main Timing app.

  • You can now also start timers via the right-click context menu of a project.

  • On macOS Big Sur, toolbar buttons now show labels next to their icons to make their purpose more clear.

  • They’ve completely reworked the app’s onboarding. If you would like to give the new onboarding a try, you can access it via the “Replay Introduction” item in the “Help” menu. Maybe you’ll learn a trick or two that you didn’t know about yet!

  • Timing will now warn when creating a time entry causes other entries to get overwritten.

  • Slightly increased the width of time entry editors, giving you more space to enter details.

  • When starting a new timer, Timing will now suggest the most recently used project by default.

  • By default, Timing will stop any running timers when your Mac goes to sleep or when you quit the Timing tracker app. You can now customize this behavior in the app’s “Tracking” preferences.

I’ve been using Timing as my primary time tracking app for several months and it is sticking with me. It is the accurate Mac data that really makes the difference for me. If you want to figure out how much time you spend on different projects and which activities (like games, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) have the worst impact on your productivity, give Timing a try.

Focused on Timing


As I’ve been rethinking where the iPad fits in my life, I’ve been using a laptop a lot more for remote work lately. That sometimes surfaces new opportunities for me and one of those is improved time tracking with Timing. I’ve always run Timing in the background, but because I was doing so much work on iPad before, it wasn’t as useful to me. With the new order of things, Timing is now giving me incredibly accurate time tracking data without requiring me to push a button every time I context shift. I like that. I also really like Timing’s reporting functions.

Timing is out with some updates. To better reflects time entries, as opposed to tasks, “tasks” have been renamed to “time entries”, as that what is what this concept actually represents. They’ve cautioned that if you are using Timing’s AppleScript functionality, you might need to replace “task” with “time entry” and/or “timer” in your scripts. 

The other update is a web app update. Now you can include app usage in the Timing web app’s reports if you’re a Timing subscriber on the “Expert” or “Teams” plan. With this update, you can use the “App Usage” switch to include or exclude app usage from your reports.

If you spend a lot of time working behind a Mac and want zero-effort time tracking data, check out Timing.


Automate Time Tracking with Timing (Sponsor)


Timing Screenshot

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Sponsored by Timing. A great habit to pick up as we head into the new year is time tracking. Figuring out what you are doing while you sit at your Mac can give you a lot of insight about where you are doing well, and where you are not. But in order to be useful, that data needs to be accurate. Requiring our monkey brains to manually turn timers on and off every time we switch gears is anything but accurate. That’s where Timing comes in.

Timing tracks your time for you, instead of making you start and stop timers. You can track how much time you spend (or waste) on each app, document and website, showing you exactly when you were working on what, when you slacked off, and how productive you have been, so you know how to improve your productivity. You can track on the go from your iPhone, and to make time tracking even easier, there are Timing Shortcuts ready for you to use.

Just this week, Timing announced a brand-new teams feature. With the teams feature, you can invite team members, who can then see and edit all the team’s projects. Each team member can also record time entries towards the project. My favorite part is that only manual time entries are visible to the manager, so there’s no worry about managers being creepy or tracking which websites you visited.

Stop guessing how you spend your time, and instead focus on doing what you’re good at with Timing. Download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year!

Track Your Time with the Updated Timing App (Sponsor)


The New Timing App

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing, the time tracker that automatically tracks your time for you. Timing has just received a significant update for Big Sur, and the new design is beautiful and modern. It fits right in with Big Sur. They’ve also updated the icon. The clock on the new icon updates in real-time, letting you put the current time in your dock. I’ve grown to appreciate having the time in my dock. (It also shows the current time in your menu bar.)


The New Timing Icon

Timing’s best feature remains its accuracy and automatic time tracking. Because Timing is automatically logging your time on your Mac, you get better data. You find out exactly how much time you spent in that Word document versus how much time you spent on Amazon.com. It is that accurate data that can help you keep track of how you are doing and make intelligent changes. I use Timing on my laptop and desktop Macs, and Timing handles syncing the data for me. If you want to get productive, the starting point is assessing how you are currently doing, and there is no better tool to do that on the Mac than Timing.

You can get Timing directly from the TimingApp website or as part of your Setapp subscription. Install it today and start getting accurate data on how you are spending your time. Download with this link for a free 14-day trial and get 10% off for the first year!

Timing App Screencast Series

I believe in time tracking as a productivity tool. I have talked about it on several podcasts over the years, and while I think getting a report of how you actually use your time can be an incredible benefit, I also understand why so few people do it. 

It is a complete pain in the neck to track your time manually. That is one of the reasons I have always liked the Timing application for Mac. It tracks your time automatically and gives you very precise data about what you did on your Mac and when you did it.

The Timing developer asked me to prepare a series of screencasts to explain how the app works. Consider the screencasts a small Timing Field Guide. If you have ever been curious about Timing and the concept of time tracking, check out the screencasts to help you decide if Timing is for you. The first screencasts are linked below. You can watch the rest of them at the developer’s website.

Timing Adds Multi-Mac Synchronization

A lot of people are getting religion about time tracking lately, myself included. Working in a law firm for all those years I got used to tracking time I spend on client matters. However, what I missed was the idea of productivity-based time tracking. Sync

Timing (a sometimes sponsor of my podcast) brings that to your Mac. It’s a great app that sits in the background and keeps track of your what you’re doing on your Mac and gives you a nice report, even grades your productivity.

For me, it’s been a great way to find (and plug) those rabbit holes in my productivity.

Today Timing released a new version that gives you all of those features and also now syncs that data between multiple Macs. So if you’re working on desktop and laptop machines, your data just got a lot better. This also gives you an off-site backup for your data so you don’t lose Timing data regardless of how many Macs you use. The new sync is an an important addition, done elegantly. The update is free for existing customers. You can get the app directly from the developer or as part of your SetApp subscription


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