Comparison
Clockify for Mac: automatic tracking and alternatives
Clockify and Dayflow serve different needs. Use this comparison to decide whether you need a team timesheet or a personal record that helps you remember your work.
Looking for the app? Download Clockify for Mac from its official website. Clockify combines timers, timesheets, and an automatic activity tracker. Dayflow is a separate Mac app for drafting a readable record of your work.
How Clockify's Mac auto-tracker works
Open Clockify's desktop app, select the auto-tracker, and start recording. It records the programs you use, window titles, and optionally website URLs. The default threshold is 60 seconds. You review an activity and add a project, description, and time entry when you want to include it in your timesheet.
According to Clockify's auto-tracker documentation, this raw activity stays locally on your computer and is automatically deleted after 45 days. Workspace administrators cannot see the raw history. Once you turn an activity into a time entry, that entry becomes part of your workspace.
Clockify or Dayflow?
| Your goal | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Submit project hours to a team | Clockify | Time entries, timesheets, and shared reports |
| Review app history without capturing screens | Clockify auto-tracker | Local app and window history that you turn into entries |
| Draft a readable account of your work | Dayflow | AI summarizes recorded screen context into a timeline |
| Prepare a weekly update | Either, with review | Use recorded activities as evidence, then check outcomes yourself |
What is free?
Clockify offers a free plan with core time tracking and a Mac app. Paid plans add administrative and billing features; check Clockify's current plan table for your team. Dayflow's core Mac app is free and open source. Local AI uses your hardware, your own cloud provider may charge for analysis, and managed Dayflow Pro is optional.
What changes if you switch?
Dayflow does not import your Clockify history or replace invoices, approvals, or payroll workflows. It captures screen context and produces an AI draft, which can misinterpret work or omit periods when recording was paused. Check the timeline before using it in a report.
If you already use Clockify for billing, try Dayflow as a personal journal before replacing anything. You can export a date range as Markdown and turn the reviewed notes into a weekly update.
Turn your notes into a weekly status report, or keep a daily work log.
Frequently asked questions
Is Clockify free on Mac?
Yes - Clockify's core (timers, timesheets, unlimited users, the Mac desktop app) is free, with paid tiers (see current pricing) adding approvals, invoicing, scheduling, and admin controls. Check the current plan table for feature availability.
Does Clockify track automatically on Mac?
It has an auto-tracker: the desktop app can record which apps and sites you use (kept locally until you act on it) and let you convert that activity into time entries. It is an assist for filling your timesheet, not a self-writing record - you still review, name, and file entries.
What is the best automatic alternative to Clockify on Mac?
If the timesheet itself is the part you want to stop doing: Dayflow - free, open source, records your screen at one frame every 10 seconds, and has AI write a readable timeline of your day. Full recordings and the local timeline stay on your Mac; AI processing depends on the mode you choose. If you need billable project reports, Timing (paid) assembles them automatically.
Clockify vs Dayflow - which should I use?
Clockify if hours have to be reported to someone: clients, managers, payroll. Dayflow if the record is for you: it answers "where did my day actually go" in sentences, automatically, with privacy determined by your AI mode, with a free core app and a choice of AI providers. You can use both.
Try the journal, not the timesheet
Dayflow is $0 and open source. Full recordings and the local timeline stay on your Mac; AI processing depends on the mode you choose.
Download for MacOS macOS 14+ · MIT licensed · no account required