The 7 Best Free Time Tracking Apps for Mac in 2026

For a free time tracker on Mac with no trial clock, start with Dayflow if you want an AI-written timeline of your day, ActivityWatch if you want open-source app tracking across several platforms, and Apple Screen Time if you only need app totals. Clockify has the strongest free plan for a team of up to 5. WakaTime is free for coders, with one week of history.

This ranking is for people on a Mac who want to know where their working hours go and do not want to pay for the answer. Some want a record to look back on at the end of the week. Others need hours they can drop into a timesheet. Either way the job is the same: capture time with as little effort as possible, at a price of zero that stays zero. If you are open to paid tools as well, see our wider list of Mac time trackers.

That last part is where most “free” lists go wrong. Plenty of apps sold as free are a trial with a countdown, or a free plan so thin that the useful part sits behind a paywall. This list only counts a free tier when the vendor’s own pages describe one. Disclosure: Dayflow is our product. It ranks first because it is the only tool here that is fully free, captures your work without timers and writes the day up as readable text. It does not win on platform coverage, since it runs only on macOS 14 or later. It also does not win on billing or team features, because it has no invoicing, payroll, team reports or website blocking.

Quick comparison

Tool	Best for	How it tracks	Price
Dayflow	A readable record of what you worked on	One screen frame every 10 seconds, then AI writes a timeline	$0 (MIT); optional Pro at $20/month
ActivityWatch	Open-source raw activity data on several systems	Active app, window title and away-from-keyboard; browser and editor add-ons	Free
Apple Screen Time	App and website totals with nothing to install	Built into macOS once App & Website Activity is on	Free, built in
Clockify	Free timesheets for a small team	Timer, timesheet, calendar and a desktop auto tracker	Free for up to 5 users; paid from $3.99 per seat/month billed annually

Head-to-head pages: ActivityWatch vs Dayflow, Screen Time vs Dayflow and Clockify for Mac.

Quick picks by use case

Best free overall: Dayflow ($0). It records your screen at one frame every 10 seconds and has AI turn that into a timeline. The AI is free if you run a local model on your Mac.

Best free open-source option for Mac plus Windows or Linux: ActivityWatch (free). No feature gates, no ads, data on your own device.

Best with nothing to install: Apple Screen Time (free, built in). Turn it on and you get daily and weekly app and website totals.

Best free plan for a team: Clockify ($0 for up to 5 users). Unlimited tracking, timesheets and reports on the free plan.

Best free timer for a very small team: Toggl (formerly Toggl Track) ($0 for up to 3 users). Polished timers and calendar integrations. Billing features start at $9 per user per month billed annually. More in Toggl for Mac.

Best for developers: WakaTime ($0 with 1 week of history). Editor plugins log coding time per project and language.

Not a free pick, but worth knowing: RescueTime (from $7/month billed annually). A free Lite plan exists, but its limits are not on the pricing page. See our RescueTime alternative page.

How we compared them

The criteria are weighted for someone on a Mac who wants to spend nothing and still end up with a useful record.

• Genuinely free, not a trial (30%). High scores go to tools where everything is free with no time limit. Low scores go to tools whose documented plans are paid, with a trial or an undescribed free tier.
• Automatic capture on the Mac (25%). High means it records your activity without you starting a timer. Low means you type or click to log time.
• What the record tells you (15%). High means a readable account of what you actually worked on. Low means app totals or only the entries you remembered to make.
• Where the data lives (15%). High means data stays on your own device by default. Low means everything goes to a vendor’s cloud.
• Billing and team features on the free plan (10%). High means several users, reports and billable hours at $0. Low means none of that.
• Platforms beyond the Mac (5%). High means the same tool covers Windows, Linux or phones. Low means Mac only.

Each tool was compared from its vendor’s own pricing and product pages on October 4, 2026. No benchmark was run, and the scores are judgments.

The 7 best free time tracking apps for Mac, ranked

1. Dayflow

Dayflow is a free, open-source Mac app that records your screen and has AI write your day into a timeline.

It captures one frame every 10 seconds and stores full screen recordings and the timeline on your Mac. For analysis you pick one of three modes. Local AI runs a supported model through Ollama or LM Studio, so screenshot analysis stays on-device, at the cost of your own hardware resources. Your own provider sends selected screenshots to the cloud service you configure, and its charges and terms apply. Dayflow Pro manages cloud analysis for $20 a month, and under the privacy policy deletes screenshots after processing. The local and cloud processing page spells out each boundary.

What you get is an answer to “what did I do on Tuesday” without having started a single timer. You can export any date range as Markdown from Settings, which covers standups, weekly notes and rough timesheets.

The app is $0 under the MIT license and needs macOS 14 or later. The limits are real: no invoices, payroll approvals, team reports or website blocking, and AI summaries can miss or misread work, so check them before sharing.

Pick it if you work alone on a Mac and want a written record of your day for free.

2. ActivityWatch

ActivityWatch is a free, open-source (MPL-2.0) automatic tracker that the vendor describes as having no feature gates, no usage limits and no ads.

It records the active application, the window title and whether you are away from the keyboard. Browser extensions add the active tab’s title and URL, and editor plugins add coding activity. The vendor states that all data is stored on your device and never sent to a server.

For someone on a Mac, this is the most complete free automatic tracker that does not depend on AI. You get timelines and charts of where your time went, and because there is a local API and support for custom watchers, you can bolt on your own scripts. It also runs on Windows, Linux and Android, which matters if your week spans more than one machine.

Price: free. The site mentions optional patronage, but no price for it was confirmed.

The honest limit is that you get data, not a story. Window titles and app names tell you that you spent 40 minutes in a browser, not what the work was. Sync between devices is still listed as work in progress, there is no iOS app, and no AI summaries are listed.

Pick it if you want a free, private, open-source record and are comfortable reading raw activity data yourself.

3. Apple Screen Time

Screen Time is the usage report built into macOS and Apple’s other operating systems.

Once you turn on App & Website Activity, it reports which apps and websites you used and for how long, how many notifications you received and how often you used your devices, in daily or weekly views. Data stays on the device, with an optional “Share across devices” setting that combines time from other devices signed in to the same Apple Account.

For a Mac user, the appeal is zero setup and zero cost. It also does things the rest of this list mostly does not: downtime schedules, time allowances for app categories and blocking of content and features. If what you want is to see that social apps ate two hours and then cap them, it already does that.

Price: free, included with macOS.

The limit is depth. Apple’s guide describes reports at the app and website level, and does not describe projects, billing or exports. It only works on Apple devices, and it records nothing until you switch it on, so there is no history for the weeks before you remembered.

Pick it if you want app totals and limits with nothing to install, and do not need to know what the work inside those apps was.

4. Clockify

Clockify is a cloud timesheet and timer app with the most generous free plan for small teams on this list.

You log time with a timer, a timesheet, the calendar or a kiosk, and the desktop app includes an auto tracker. Activity monitoring is a Pro feature. The Free plan covers up to 5 users with unlimited tracking, timer, timesheets, the auto tracker, calendar, reports and the apps, on web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and browser extensions. Data is hosted in the cloud, with a choice of the EU (Germany), UK, USA or Australia.

What a Mac user gets is a real timesheet product at $0 that a small team can share. The paid plans stay cheap if you outgrow it: Basic is $3.99 per seat per month billed annually or $4.99 billed monthly, and Standard is $5.49 per seat per month billed annually or $6.99 billed monthly. There is a 7-day trial of Pro features with no credit card.

The limits: invoicing and approvals need Standard or above, the free plan stops at 5 users, and the product is mainly timer and timesheet based. No AI features are listed.

Pick it if you need shared timesheets for a few people and want to pay nothing until you need invoices.

5. Toggl (formerly Toggl Track)

Toggl is the renamed Toggl Track, now presented as one product combining time tracking with planning.

It is built around manual and real-time timers, timesheets and calendar integrations. The vendor also lists automated background tracking and a timeline in the desktop app, and states that it does not take screenshots or record keystrokes. Data syncs through Toggl’s cloud across web, desktop and mobile apps.

The Free plan, which the vendor calls free forever, covers up to 3 users with timers, focus mode, calendar integrations, tasks and boards. For a Mac user who likes starting and stopping a timer, it is one of the cleanest free options. Toggl AI answers natural-language questions about workspace data and handles admin tasks, and there is an MCP server and an AI Task Creator.

Paid plans: Starter is $9 per user per month billed annually or $12 billed monthly. Premium is $16 per user per month billed annually or $24 billed monthly. Enterprise is priced on request. Paid plans have a 30-day trial.

The limit is that billable rates need a paid plan, the free plan stops at 3 users, and the core of the product is still a timer rather than a full automatic record. For which plan includes background tracking, see the vendor’s pricing page.

Pick it if you want a timer-first tracker for yourself or two colleagues, and may pay for billing later.

6. WakaTime

WakaTime is a developer time tracker that logs coding activity through editor plugins.

Its open-source plugins for over 100 editors, IDEs and terminals record coding time per project, language and editor, along with AI coding usage, and send it to a hosted web dashboard. The AI tracking covers adoption, model usage and spend, and AI-generated versus human-written lines across tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot and Codex. The server location is not stated on the pages read.

The Free plan includes unlimited projects, one programming goal and 1 week of dashboard history. For a developer on a Mac, that is enough to see this week’s coding time with no manual input.

Paid plans: Basic is $9 a month billed monthly or $8.25 a month billed $99 yearly. Premium is $14 a month billed monthly or $12.83 a month billed $153.96 yearly. Team and Business cost $21 and $24 per developer per month billed monthly. The Team plan has a 14-day trial with no credit card.

The limit is scope. It only sees what happens inside supported editors and terminals, so meetings, docs and browser research are invisible. The free history window is one week, and full history needs Premium.

Pick it if most of your working day happens in an editor and a week of history is enough.

7. RescueTime

RescueTime is a background tracker for apps and websites, aimed at focus and distraction control.

It runs in the background and tracks time spent in apps and on websites. The vendor states it does not collect keystrokes, form input, screenshots or webpage content. Activity data goes to RescueTime’s cloud to generate reports, and the vendor says it is never shared, sold or used for advertising.

What sets it apart is focus tooling: distraction blocking, focus sessions, goals and alerts, plus an assistant listed as a Focus feature. Timesheets with projects, clients and billable rates are available on the higher plans.

This is where the free-versus-trial question bites. The pricing FAQ mentions a free Lite plan that accounts fall back to after cancelling, but the pricing page does not describe its limits, so see the vendor’s pricing page before relying on it. The documented plans are paid: Focus (Solo) is $7 a month billed annually ($84) or $9 billed monthly, and Solo+ is $12 a month billed annually ($144) or $15 billed monthly. All paid plans have a 14-day trial.

The pages read list “desktop apps” without naming operating systems, so confirm Mac support on the vendor’s site.

Pick it if you want blocking and focus goals and are willing to pay after the trial.

Full comparison table

Tool	Price	Automatic capture	AI summaries	Where data lives	Open source	Platforms
Dayflow	$0; optional Pro $20/month	Yes, one screen frame every 10 seconds	Yes, via local AI, your own provider or Pro	Recordings and timeline on your Mac; screenshots go off-device only with your provider or Pro	Yes, MIT	macOS 14 or later
ActivityWatch	Free	Yes, apps, window titles, away-from-keyboard	None listed	Your own device	Yes, MPL-2.0	Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
Apple Screen Time	Free, built in	Yes, apps and websites once turned on	None listed	On device, optional sharing across your Apple Account	No	Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple Vision Pro
Clockify	Free for up to 5 users; paid from $3.99/seat/month billed annually	Auto tracker in desktop app; mainly timer and timesheet	None listed	Cloud, hosted in EU, UK, USA or Australia	No	Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, browser extensions
Toggl	Free for up to 3 users; paid from $9/user/month billed annually	Mainly timers; background tracking and timeline listed in desktop app	Toggl AI answers questions about workspace data	Cloud	No	Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, browser extensions
WakaTime	Free with 1 week of history; paid from $8.25/month billed yearly	Yes, inside supported editors and terminals	No summaries listed; tracks AI coding usage	Cloud, location not stated	Plugins only	100+ editors, IDEs and terminals; web dashboard
RescueTime	Lite plan exists, limits not on pricing page; paid from $7/month billed annually	Yes, apps and websites	”The Assistant” listed on Focus	Cloud	No	Desktop apps, iOS, Android, web

Is a free plan the same as a free trial?

No, and the difference decides whether a tool belongs on a free list at all. A free trial is a paid plan with a start date and an end date. Clockify gives 7 days of Pro, WakaTime gives 14 days of Team, RescueTime gives 14 days on all paid plans, and Toggl gives 30 days on paid plans. When the trial ends, you either pay or drop to whatever free tier exists.

A free plan has no end date but usually has a fence. Here the fences are clear:

• Clockify: up to 5 users, no invoicing or approvals.
• Toggl: up to 3 users, no billable rates.
• WakaTime: 1 week of dashboard history.
• RescueTime: a Lite plan whose limits the pricing page does not spell out.

Then there are tools with no fence. ActivityWatch has no paid tier gating features. Screen Time is part of macOS. Dayflow’s app is $0 and MIT licensed, and the optional Pro plan only replaces the AI processing you could run yourself. The catch with Dayflow is that free AI means a local model on your own hardware, or a cloud provider you pay directly.

A practical test: imagine it is three months from now and you never paid. Do you still have your history, and does the tool still record? For the three fully free tools, yes. For WakaTime, you have one week. For RescueTime, you have whatever Lite turns out to include.

Do you need a timer if the app tracks automatically?

It depends on what the record is for. If you bill by the hour, a timer is still the cleanest way to tie minutes to a client, because you decide in the moment what counts. That is why Clockify and Toggl lead with timers, and why their billing features sit on paid plans.

If the goal is understanding or remembering your work, timers tend to fail quietly. You forget to start one, forget to stop one, or stop logging by Thursday. Automatic tools avoid that by recording everything and letting you sort it out later. The trade-off is what “everything” means. ActivityWatch and Screen Time record which app was in front, which is honest but thin. WakaTime records editor time and nothing else. Dayflow records what was on screen and writes it up, which gets closer to “what did I work on”, but uses screen capture to do it. If screen capture is a line you will not cross, read time tracking without surveillance first. There is more on the general approach in what is an automatic time tracker.

Before choosing, it can help to estimate where you think your week goes, then compare that guess with what any of these tools records. The where does my week go calculator gives you the guess.

Where Dayflow is the wrong pick

Dayflow ranks first for a solo Mac user who wants a free written record. Plenty of people are not that person.

• You also work on Windows or Linux. Dayflow is Mac only. ActivityWatch covers Windows, Mac, Linux and Android for free and keeps data local.
• You run a small team that needs shared timesheets. Dayflow has no team reports. Clockify’s free plan covers up to 5 users, and Standard adds invoicing and approvals at $5.49 per seat per month billed annually.
• You need invoices or billable rates. Dayflow does not do invoicing or payroll. Clockify (Standard and up) or Toggl (Starter at $9 per user per month billed annually) are the right tools.
• You want to block distracting sites. Dayflow has no website blocking. Screen Time does it for free; RescueTime does it on paid plans.
• You only care about coding time. WakaTime’s per-project, per-language metrics fit that job better.
• You do not want any screen capture. ActivityWatch and Screen Time record app activity without screenshots, and Toggl states it does not take screenshots.
• Your Mac runs something older than macOS 14. Dayflow will not install. ActivityWatch or Screen Time will.

How much do they cost?

Tool	Plan	Price
Dayflow	Free app	$0
Dayflow	Pro	$20/month
ActivityWatch	ActivityWatch	Free
Apple Screen Time	Included with macOS	Free, built in
Clockify	Free	$0, up to 5 users
Clockify	Basic	$3.99/seat/month billed annually, or $4.99 billed monthly
Clockify	Standard	$5.49/seat/month billed annually, or $6.99 billed monthly
Clockify	Pro	$7.99/seat/month billed annually, or $9.99 billed monthly
Clockify	Enterprise	$11.99/seat/month billed annually, or $14.99 billed monthly
Clockify	CAKE.com Bundle	$12.99/seat/month billed annually, or $15.99 billed monthly
Toggl	Free	$0, up to 3 users
Toggl	Starter	$9/user/month billed annually, or $12 billed monthly
Toggl	Premium	$16/user/month billed annually, or $24 billed monthly
Toggl	Enterprise	Contact vendor
WakaTime	Free	$0, 1 week of history
WakaTime	Basic	$9/month billed monthly, or $8.25/month billed $99 yearly
WakaTime	Premium	$14/month billed monthly, or $12.83/month billed $153.96 yearly
WakaTime	Team	$21/dev/month billed monthly, or $19.25/dev/month billed $231/dev yearly
WakaTime	Business	$24/dev/month billed monthly, or $22/dev/month billed $264/dev yearly
RescueTime	Lite	See the vendor’s pricing page
RescueTime	Focus (Solo)	$7/month billed annually ($84), or $9 billed monthly
RescueTime	Solo+ (Focus + Timesheets)	$12/month billed annually ($144), or $15 billed monthly
RescueTime	Team Focus	$10/user/month billed annually ($120), or $12 billed monthly
RescueTime	Team+ (Focus + Timesheets)	$16/user/month billed annually ($192), or $18 billed monthly

For one person, the cheapest sensible setup is $0: Dayflow with a local model for a written timeline, or ActivityWatch with Screen Time for raw app data and limits. For a small team that needs hours, Clockify’s free plan costs nothing for up to 5 people, and Standard at $5.49 per seat per month billed annually is the first paid step worth taking, once you need invoices. Dayflow’s plans are on the pricing page.

The bottom line

If you work alone on a Mac and want to remember what you did without timers, Dayflow is free and writes your day for you. If you want free, open-source app tracking that also runs on Windows or Linux, use ActivityWatch. If you only want app totals and limits, turn on Screen Time. If a small team needs shared timesheets at $0, Clockify is the pick, with WakaTime as the free option for developers who live in an editor.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a completely free time tracker for Mac?

Yes. Dayflow ($0, MIT licensed), ActivityWatch (free and open source under MPL-2.0) and Apple Screen Time (built into macOS) are free with no trial period and no paid feature you need to unlock basic tracking. Dayflow's AI summaries are free when you run a local model through Ollama or LM Studio. Clockify, Toggl and WakaTime also have permanent free plans, but each limits users, features or history.

Is Toggl free on Mac?

Toggl (formerly Toggl Track) has a Free plan the vendor describes as free forever, for up to 3 users, with timers, focus mode, calendar integrations, tasks and boards. It runs on Mac, web, Windows, iOS, Android and in browser extensions. Billable rates need a paid plan. Starter costs $9 per user per month billed annually or $12 billed monthly, and paid plans come with a 30-day trial.

Is Clockify really free?

Clockify's Free plan covers up to 5 users with unlimited tracking, the timer, timesheets, the desktop auto tracker, calendar, reports and the apps. It is not a trial. What you do not get for free is invoicing and approvals, which start at the Standard plan ($5.49 per seat per month billed annually or $6.99 monthly). Data lives in Clockify's cloud, with hosting in the EU, UK, USA or Australia.

Does RescueTime have a free plan?

RescueTime's pricing FAQ says accounts revert to a free Lite plan after cancelling, but the pricing page does not describe what Lite includes, so see the vendor's pricing page at rescuetime.com before counting on it. The documented plans are paid: Focus (Solo) is $7 a month billed annually ($84) or $9 billed monthly, with a 14-day trial on all paid plans.

Is Dayflow free, and do the AI summaries cost extra?

The Dayflow app is $0 and MIT licensed, on macOS 14 or later. AI summaries are free if you run a supported model on your Mac through Ollama or LM Studio, which uses your own hardware. If you connect your own cloud provider, that provider's charges apply. Dayflow Pro, at $20 a month, is the optional plan where Dayflow manages cloud analysis for you.

What is the best free time tracker if I use both Mac and Windows?

ActivityWatch beats Dayflow here. Dayflow runs only on macOS 14 or later, while ActivityWatch is free and open source on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, and stores data on your own device. Device sync is still listed as work in progress, so each machine keeps its own record for now. If you need a shared cloud timesheet across systems, Clockify's free plan also covers Windows and Linux.

Can Apple Screen Time track time on projects?

Apple's documentation describes Screen Time reports at the app and website level, as daily or weekly views, plus notifications and how often you pick up your devices. Projects, billing and exports are not described in the guide, so treat it as a usage report rather than a work log. It also records nothing until you turn on App & Website Activity.

Is WakaTime free for developers?

WakaTime has a Free plan with unlimited projects, one programming goal and 1 week of dashboard history. Older history needs a paid plan, and the vendor lists full history under Premium ($14 a month billed monthly, or $12.83 a month billed $153.96 yearly). It only tracks activity inside supported editors, IDEs and terminals, so meetings and browser work are not captured.

Which free Mac time tracker keeps my data off the cloud?

ActivityWatch states all data stays on your device and is never sent to a server. Apple Screen Time stores data locally, with optional sharing across devices on the same Apple Account. Dayflow keeps recordings and the timeline on your Mac, and with Local AI the screenshot analysis stays on-device too. Clockify, Toggl, WakaTime and RescueTime are cloud services.

Can I send invoices from a free time tracker?

Not from any free plan covered here. Clockify adds invoicing at its Standard plan, $5.49 per seat per month billed annually. Toggl needs a paid plan for billable rates, starting with Starter at $9 per user per month billed annually. RescueTime's billable rates sit in its Timesheets plans. Dayflow, ActivityWatch and Screen Time have no invoicing at all.