Guides / Tracking time

Tracking time

The timer lives in a small panel behind the menu bar or tray icon. You start it with one click, and HourSlip takes care of the awkward parts: laptops that fall asleep, timers left on overnight and time you spent away from the desk.

Start and stop

Click HourSlip in the menu bar, beside the notch on a notched MacBook, or in the system tray on Windows and Linux. The panel lists your most recent projects, six at most. Click one to start tracking it.

Only one timer runs at a time. Clicking another project stops the current entry and starts a new one, so switching between clients is a single click.

While a timer runs, the panel shows the elapsed time, the project and a notes field that asks "What are you working on?". Notes end up on the timesheet and, if you list entries on your invoices, in front of your client. Write them for that reader.

Press Stop to finish the entry.

On a Mac

• ⌃1 to ⌃6 start the project in that row while the panel is open.
• With more than six projects, a search field appears. Type part of a project or client name and press Return to start the top result.
• ⌥⌘. stops the timer.
• When nothing is running, a Continue row offers your last entry again. ⇧⌘R does the same.

On Windows and Linux

• Left-click the tray icon to open the panel, or choose Show Timer from its menu.
• The Timesheet has its own start card: pick a project and press Start, or press Resume to pick up the last entry.
• Closing the main window doesn't quit HourSlip. It stays in the tray with the timer running. Quit from the tray menu.

Stop or resume from any app

One shortcut works everywhere, whether HourSlip is in front or not: ⌃⌥⌘T on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T on Windows and Linux. It stops the timer if one is running and resumes your last entry if not.

It's on by default and you can turn it off in Settings › General. If another app already uses the combination, Settings tells you.

Continue an earlier entry

Continuing starts a new entry now, on the same project, with the same note. It doesn't reopen the old one. Besides the shortcuts above, hover any row in the Timesheet and press its play button, or right-click it and choose Continue Tracking.

What the menu bar or tray shows

Settings › General has a setting called Menu bar while tracking (Tray while tracking on Windows and Linux) with three choices: elapsed time, time and project, or the icon alone.

• Mac with a notch. The project's color sits left of the notch and the time on the right. If another app uses the notch, HourSlip moves to the menu bar and comes back when it's free. Show the timer in Settings › General pins it to one place.
• Windows. The tray icon changes while tracking, and hovering it shows the project and time.
• Linux. Panels that support it show the time next to the icon.

When you step away

HourSlip never removes time by itself. It asks.

If the computer sleeps for 10 minutes or more, if HourSlip was closed, or if you were away from the keyboard past the idle limit, the running timer shows a question: "No activity for 45m. Keep that time?"

• Keep leaves the entry as it is. Use it when the time was work, such as a call or a meeting.
• Discard ends the entry where the away time began and carries on in a new entry from the moment you came back. The work on both sides is kept.

If you stop or switch project before answering, HourSlip asks first, so a night of sleep can't be billed by accident. The idle limit is 10 minutes by default, and Settings › Tracking can change it or turn it off. Smart tracking explains how idle time is noticed.

Quitting and restarting

Quitting HourSlip doesn't stop the timer. Neither does a restart or a crash. The entry is still running when the app comes back, and if 10 minutes or more went by, you get the same Keep or Discard question for the gap.

A timer left running

After 10 hours, the timer asks "forgot to stop?" and offers Stop at… with a few sensible times: 1, 2, 4 or 8 hours after it started, the moment the computer went to sleep, or now. Pick the closest and the entry ends there.

If none of them is right, stop it and fix the times in the Timesheet.

Weekly goal and budgets

Set Weekly hours goal in Settings › General and the panel shows this week's hours against it, with a bar that fills as you go.

If the running project has an hour budget, the Mac panel shows a chip once you've used 80% of it and "Over budget" at 100%.