a free Timing alternative, with nothing watching
updated · by Anton Shakirov
Timing tracks your Mac automatically: it watches which apps, documents and websites you use and sorts the result into projects afterwards. hop counts what you start by hand. these are two different bargains, not two versions of the same one.
if reconstructing a day you forgot to log is the problem you actually have, automatic tracking solves it and manual tracking does not. this page is for the person who would rather nothing kept a record of everything they opened.
what Timing is built for
not forgetting. it runs in the background and records which applications, documents and websites you were in, then lets you assign that history to projects — so a day you never logged can still be turned into a timesheet. the vendor's own line for it is «no timers needed», and that is the whole product in three words.
for a freelancer billing by the hour, that trade is often obviously worth it. nothing below is an argument that it is not.
what Timing costs, checked 10 september 2026
there is no free tier. the trial runs thirty days and asks for no card; after that the cheapest way in is Professional at $11 a month or $108 for a year, which covers one Mac for one person. Expert is $14 a month or $132 a year and covers two Macs, Connect $20 per user a month or $192 a year for teams. all three checked on 10 september 2026 at the vendor's own checkout.
no one-time purchase exists on any tier. if the monthly line on the card is the part you are trying to get rid of, that is the number to weigh — not the two-dollar gap between one tracker and another.
and if it is monthly charges in general rather than this tracker in particular, that argument has a page of its own: Setapp alternative
the permissions automatic tracking needs
to know which document you were in rather than only which app, an automatic tracker needs Accessibility access, and Timing says so in its own help. it also asks for Screen Recording — not to record the screen, but as a fallback for apps like Premiere Pro that do not hand their window title to the Accessibility API.
Apple's own wording for that switch is blunt: an app with Accessibility access can access and control your Mac, under its own privacy policy rather than Apple's. Apple Support: allow accessibility apps to access your Mac
why so many Mac apps end up asking for that permission, and what separates the ones that need it from the ones that ask anyway: why Mac apps ask for accessibility
and the screen recording prompt, which comes back after updates for a reason: the screen recording permission that keeps coming back
where Timing beats this outright
four things, and none of them are close. a comparison that skips this part is not worth the minute it takes to read.
the day you never logged
this is the one that sells the product, and it should. you worked all thursday, pressed start on nothing, and on friday somebody asks what thursday was. Timing has an answer because something was watching. hop has only your memory.
which document, and which site
app-level time is the easy part. Timing goes a level down — the file you had open and its path, the site you were reading — and sorts it into projects by rules you write once. it also pulls iPhone and iPad usage in from Screen Time, so hours spent away from the Mac land in the same timeline.
reports, exports and hours you can bill
seven preset reports on the cheapest tier with Excel, CSV and PDF export, fully customisable ones with HTML and JSON higher up, rounding for cleaner timesheets, and a flag on each project for whether the work has been billed and paid.
hop has none of that. no rate field, no client, no invoice, no export for an accountant.
if invoices and a team are the real requirement rather than the automatic part, the tracker to compare against is a different one, and it has its own page: Toggl alternative
a productivity score
you assign a productivity score to each project and Timing tracks how the number moves over weeks, with the menu-bar widget keeping it in front of you. whether that changes anything is your call, but nothing here produces such a number.
the trade automatic tracking asks for
to reconstruct your day, something has to have been watching it. that is the mechanism rather than a flaw, and Timing is straightforward about it — but it is the decision the listicles skip, because every app on their list makes the same one.
an automatic tracker holds a record of every app, document and site you touched. on your own Mac that is usually fine. on a machine somebody else can sit down at, settle it before the thirty days start. hop has nothing of that kind — not because it is safer, but because there is no recorder in it to switch off.
| what you are doing | Timing | hop |
|---|---|---|
| reconstructing a thursday you logged nothing on | this is what it is for — keep Timing | nothing watched it; you fill it in from memory |
| splitting an hour between two files in the same app | the document and its path were recorded | one task, unless you started two |
| billing a client from the hours | reports, rounding, billed-and-paid flags | not here at all |
| counting your own hours to see where the week went | $11 a month once the trial ends | free, and there is no tier above it |
| keeping no record of what you had open | the record is the mechanism | there is nothing to keep |
| granting Accessibility and Screen Recording | needed for document-level tracking | not asked for |
| a second Mac, and the same hours on both | $14 a month on Expert, synced | install it again — the two logs stay separate |
the tracking module itself — what the menu bar shows while a clock is running, and the point where Screen Time stops being enough — is written out on its own page: a time tracker in your Mac menu bar
what a Timing alternative looks like without a recorder
the other way to know where an hour went is to say so when it starts. it fails loudly rather than quietly: a task nobody started is visibly missing, while a mis-sorted automatic entry looks exactly like a correct one.
a task counts the stretch you are in from zero while it runs, the tick beside it closes that stretch, and a project shows the sum of the tasks under it. one switch above the list swaps between today, this week and all of it.
macOS does ship one automatic counter of its own. Screen Time reports app and website activity, and it counts apps rather than tasks — a different question from the one a tracker answers. Apple Support: use Screen Time on Mac
the hour you forgot to press start on
manual tracking breaks on the same thing every time, and a tool that cannot cope with it is a tool you quietly stop opening.
so open a task and every stretch it collected is listed: change how long one ran, move one to the day it actually belongs to, or add an hour nobody pressed play for. hand corrections sit in the same list, so the lines always add up to the total above them.
it is repair, not reconstruction. it works because you remember roughly what you did this morning, and stops working somewhere around last tuesday — the honest limit of doing it by hand.
the eight-hour banner, and the list beside the clock
leave a task running too long and hop tells you after eight hours — almost always a timer left going overnight, which is the single number most likely to ruin a week of records.
a to-do list sits next to the hours: full text, your own description, a star for what matters, and a reminder with a day, a time and the weekdays it repeats on.
all of it stays on this Mac. no account, no server, nothing syncing to a phone — which is the same sentence as «no web app and no second machine», said from the other side.
how to decide in a week
- install hop — six megabytes, macOS 14 or later, nothing to register
- track a week by hand and count how many entries you had to repair afterwards
- if it was most of them, automatic tracking is the answer — Timing has thirty days free, no card
- if it was one or two, you have just saved $108 a year
if the week shows the problem is focus rather than record-keeping, the timer sitting beside the tracker runs pomodoro cycles instead: TomatoBar alternative
frequently asked questions
- does hop track automatically?
- no. it counts what you start. automatic tracking means an app recording every app, document and site you open, and that is a bigger trade than this module asks for.
- does Timing have a free version?
- no. thirty days free with no card, then $11 a month or $108 a year for one Mac — checked 10 september 2026. there is no free tier and no one-time purchase on any tier.
- is there a free automatic time tracker for Mac?
- yes, and it is not this one. ActivityWatch is open source, tracks automatically and keeps its data on your machine. if automatic tracking is what you actually want, that is the honest answer — hop counts what you start.
- does Timing record what i am doing?
- it records which apps, documents and websites you use, because that is how a day gets reconstructed. it needs Accessibility access for the document part, and Screen Recording as a fallback for apps that do not expose their window title.
- can i add time i forgot to track?
- yes — add a stretch by hand, fix a length, or move one to another day. it is repair rather than reconstruction.
- can i invoice from hop?
- no. reports, rates and invoicing are what dedicated trackers are built around.
- where do my hours live?
- on this Mac. no account, no server, and nothing syncing to a phone.
the hop side of this
time tracker — where the hours went, kept on this Mac and nowhere else.
about the author
Anton Shakirovmakes hop
makes hop and every page on this site. eighteen tools under a single menu bar icon, MIT licensed and open source. reads and answers issues and email himself.