Temporal.ist

Temporal.ist is a passive time-tracking tool that records how you spend your work time automatically, without start/stop timers or manual entry. It watches file changes as you work and attributes that activity to the right projects automatically — so there's no tagging or categorizing to do afterwards. You can also set up predefined URLs to track, so browser-based work counts too. Your timesheets are essentially ready the moment you stop working.

Built for freelancers and small teams, it's designed around a simple idea: the best time tracker is one you don't have to think about. By inferring your work directly from the files you touch and the sites you work in, it gives you an accurate picture of where your hours actually go — useful for billing clients, quoting future work, and spotting where your week leaks time. When it's time to get paid, one-click invoicing turns those tracked hours into a client invoice without the usual copy-paste.

Privacy is a first-class concern. Unlike employee-surveillance tools, temporal.ist is built for you to understand your own work, not for managers to monitor staff — your activity data stays yours.

It's available across platforms: a web app, native desktop apps (Windows, macOS, Linux), and mobile apps for iOS and Android, so your tracking follows you wherever you work.