Automatic time tracking for Mac freelancers
watches your selected work folders, detects deep work automatically, and prepares clean weekly invoices — privately on your Mac.
Quiet. Local. Honest about your week.
Three steps, always in the same order. No timer to start, no screenshots, no monitoring — just a clear record of the work you actually did.
The folders you pick — and only those.
Drop ~/code/client-app and ~/clients/mira-studio into tracewise once. The menu-bar agent watches those paths. The rest of your machine is invisible to it.
Not what you type. How your time actually breaks down.
tracewise looks at activity in the folders you choose — when you're working, when you switch projects, when you step away. It never reads your files. That activity, all processed on your Mac, becomes a simple focus score, sorted into deep work, regular work, and away time.
Friday morning, your invoice is already written.
Your tracked hours, grouped by project, with notes pulled from each session. Review it, decide what to charge, export the PDF. The work you already did, ready to send.
Start free. Upgrade when it pays for itself.
The free plan is enough to see how it works. Solo adds AI insights and automatic invoicing for freelancers who bill every week.
For trying automatic tracking.
For freelancers who bill clients every week.
The questions we get every week.
Longer answers live in the documentation and the Privacy Promise.
Missing one? hello@tracewise.app.
No. The agent reads filesystem events — names, timestamps, idle gaps, project switches. It never opens or transmits file contents. Run it offline if you want; the dashboard syncs only when you sign in.
A small on-device model weighs three signals: the rhythm of save/build events, gaps between context switches, and how long you stay in a single folder. It is a tendency, not a verdict — you can disable scoring entirely and still get hours-by-project.
A clean one-page PDF with your branding, billable hours grouped by project, and optional session notes. You review and sign before anything is sent — tracewise never emails clients on your behalf.
Not today. The menu-bar agent is macOS-only. A Linux daemon is on the roadmap, but no Windows plans.
Cancelling just stops the billing — nothing is deleted. Your account stays, your data stays, and you move to the Free plan. Cloud data is only removed if you delete your account, which clears it within 30 days. Local data always stays on your Mac. Want an export first? Settings → Your data → Export data gives you everything as JSON.
tracewise is built for freelancers and independent professionals who do focused work on a Mac — especially developers, designers, writers, consultants, and small studios that bill clients for their time.
No. tracewise is a personal work log, not surveillance software. It never records screenshots, keystrokes, clipboard contents, or file contents, and it only watches folders you explicitly choose.