Last Updated on May 26, 2024 by Jhonni Jets
Time tracking is an essential tool for anyone who bills clients by the hour, wants to improve productivity, or simply gain insight into how they spend their time each day. Whether you’re a freelancer, remote worker, small business owner, or just looking to optimize your schedule, keeping tabs on your hours can yield valuable data for decision making.
There are countless time tracking apps available for macOS that each offer their own set of features. In this article, we’ll explore the 5 best options for tracking time on a Mac based on metrics like ease of use, reporting capabilities, task management integration, and pricing. No matter your specific workflow or budget, one of these top-rated apps is sure to help you make the most of every minute.
Table of Content
1. Toggl
Toggl is one of the most full-featured and versatile time tracking apps for Mac. It offers a clean, intuitive interface for logging hours across projects, clients, and tasks. You can easily start and stop timers with keyboard shortcuts, tags, or natural language commands. Project hierarchies and customized timers give you granular control over how work is categorized.
Toggl excels at reporting, with automatically generated detailed and summary views of hours, earnings, and more. Reports can be filtered, shared, scheduled, and exported in a variety of formats. The app also integrates tightly with various project management and invoicing tools. A free Basic plan provides unlimited timers and basic reporting. Paid Starter and Premium tiers unlock additional features like offline access, task dependencies, and unlimited collaborators.
2. Harvest
Harvest is a leader in time tracking and client billing solutions. Their Mac app focuses more on the back-end and collaboration aspects compared to others on this list. It seamlessly syncs timers across all your devices and provides a centralized hub for teams to log hours, create invoices, and manage clients.
Harvest offers extensive reporting templates to showcase work in various visual formats. Invoices can be beautifully designed and exported with prebuilt layouts. Automatic invoicing keeps client billing on schedule. The time tracking interface is simple though less robust than some competitors. However, Harvest truly excels at workflows for remote agencies, consultants or other businesses billing clients directly. Pricing is competitive with Toggl starting at $12 per user per month.
3. RescueTime
While not strictly a timer-based time tracker, RescueTime is a powerful option for analyzing your overall tech habits and productivity. Using your computer’s local usage data and online activity, it builds a detailed picture of how you spend each workday.
The Mac app functions discretely in the background without requiring manual timer operations. Later, you can login to the RescueTime dashboard online to view personalized insights like top applications, websites visited, and automatically detected activities like email, coding, or writing. Powerful reporting allows filtering by project, date and more.
RescueTime goes beyond basic timers by offering coaching features to help improve focus, reduce distractions, and maximize output. A free plan provides basic usage analytics, with paid personal and team tiers adding premium productivity reports and coaching materials. Though less focused on invoicing, RescueTime offers deep insights ideal for knowledge workers and sole proprietors.
4. Clockify
Clockify is a capable time tracking solution that stands out for its clean interface and range of integrations. Its timer functions are tidy and intuitive to use across projects, tasks, and team members. Tracking can also be automated through native integrations with over 150 project management and productivity tools like Trello, Asana, GitHub and more.
Comprehensive reports are filterable and exportable to CSV or PDF. Clockify provides colorful customizable dashboards for at-a-glance tracking of hours, projects, teams and clients. Invoicing capabilities cover basic needs for freelancers with invoicing templates and estimates. An affordable free plan is available, with paid tiers unlocking additional team features, custom branding and unlimited users. Overall Clockify prioritizes integration across tools over advanced reporting depth.
5. Hours
Hours bills itself as the “missing time tracker for agencies” and that’s accurate – it provides robust team collaboration tools especially suited for service businesses. Standout features include permissions to assign tasks, view colleagues’ timers, comment on entries, and approve timesheets. Customizable profiles, roles and permissions keep projects organized for all team members.
Project and task hierarchies support detailed reporting into productivity by billing code or individual. Invoices can be generated directly from timesheets while accounting for expenses and discounts. Hours also plays nicely with other services through integrations like Xero, Harvest, and PayPal. The free plan covers basic usage; paid tiers scale to team size and accounting needs. Quality support further adds to Hours’ appeal for growing small businesses and agencies.
Conclusion
In summary, all of the apps highlighted above represent excellent options for efficiently tracking time on a Mac. Whether prioritizing invoicing tools, robust reporting, task management integrations, team collaboration or mobile usage – there is a top solution suited to various workflows. Toggl, Harvest and Time Camp stand out for fully rounded feature sets across teams of all sizes. Meanwhile, RescueTime, Clockify and Everhour excel for specific use cases of productivity analytics, tool connections, or freelancer flexibility respectively. No matter your needs – taking control of your hours with a dedicated time tracking app will yield huge benefits.