I’m good at tracking time for my clients, but not so great at tracking it for myself. What’s your favorite Mac + iOS time tracking tool? iOS support is imperative.

@Aleen I use Cushion. Works well enough and has a Mac menu bar app for native use. Good luck. cushionapp.com/blog/menu...

@Aleen Ah, I wish I could follow/subscribe to a thread on m.b. I too am in need of such solution — I want to see what’s out there.

@amit Apple Notes! A single note titled “Timecards”. Each client has a section with current projects. Super easy to just add a new line for each work session. Date, time, note of task. Most get build quarterly and it’s trivial to transfer to my FileMaker Pro Invoice database.

@Denny @Aleen Sigh. Yeah, I follow a similar process, not with Apple Notes though. Looking for a simpler solution though - it especially becomes tricky managing and tracking the metadata.

@amit @Aleen I’ve been pretty happy with Freshbooks, as you can run timers against Client > Project > Service categories, and add notes to your logged time.

@AngeloStavrow yeah heard a lot about freshbooks. Always thought it was more for usage of smaller teams, than individual usage.

@amit I've been using it individually as I’m technically an international contractor (so I use it for billing, time tracking, and expensing). Whether or not it's too much for your purposes certainly depends on your purposes, of course, so your mileage may vary. 🙂

@AngeloStavrow Sure. Thank you for sharing that.

@AngeloStavrow 👍🏽

@Aleen I don't have an answer, but a question: why you want to track the time of your own?

@daiwei I want to know where my workday is going. I know I spend a lot of time answering student emails, but how much time? How much am I actually mindlessly scrolling through social media?

@Aleen You'd better be sure you really want to know how much time you spend scrolling social media! 😬 🙈

@davemacdo too. dang. much.

@zorn thanks!

@Aleen See Timing for macOS. It doesn't have an iOS counterpart though.

@amit The ones that meet my criteria at first blush recommended Cushion, Toggl, Timing(?), Timelogger, and ATracker. I haven't done any investigation yet, though :)

@Aleen Ah great, thank you. Toggl was something I was seriously considering. Looks to be simple, has web interface and iOS app too. Plus a free tier and trial.

@Aleen I use a lot of web tools so I’d like something that can track that too.

@amit I would give a shout-out to Cushion. The developer there is great creative and inspiring. I ditched Toggl because it felt too clunky.

@jhull Ah, thank you sharing that feedback. Does cushion also have an iOS app? I didn’t see one.

@amit no. That’s the only drawback. But I love it more for its comprehensive account of my business. I had Harvest but they stopped innovating. And I tried Toggl but it just felt clunky. Cushion sticks with me.

@Verso I don't think what I want exists. It's too hard with iOS's sandboxing.

@Aleen I use Drafts to track my time for work. It's not automatic, but writing down what you're doing at any given time requires its own sort of intentionality that might have the effect you're looking for.

@ciaran I think I’m going to try something manual like this :)

@Aleen A couple tips if you go this route: make a keyboard button to insert a time stamp. Make an action to total up the time for different tasks for you on a given day and put them into a spreadsheet for analysis.

(That's what I do. I just need to get around to writing it up as a blog post)

@ciaran I would read that blog post. Drafts is the handiest app on my phone.

@petebrown I'll have to get it together and write the post then!