ActivityWatch is a free, open-source application that passively records how you spend every minute at your Mac — which app holds focus, which browser tabs you visit, how long you sit idle — without ever transmitting that data beyond your own machine. Every record lands in a local database you own outright, making it one of the most privacy-respecting automated time-tracking tools on any platform.
What is ActivityWatch?
ActivityWatch is a self-hosted activity monitor that automatically captures your computer usage at the application, window-title, and browser-tab level, then surfaces that data through a local web dashboard running at localhost:5600. It works through a lightweight background service paired with a growing ecosystem of "watchers" — thin plugins that feed event streams into a central broker. Install the AFK watcher and it knows when you stepped away; add the browser extension and it records exactly which URL was open; enable the VS Code extension and it tracks editing time per project. You never have to start or stop a timer.
What does ActivityWatch do best?
ActivityWatch's strongest suit is honest, automated data collection that requires zero discipline on your part. Unlike Toggl Track or Clockify — which only know what you tell them — ActivityWatch sees everything and lets you interrogate the truth later. After a week of use I was forced to admit I spent far more time in Slack than I thought, and my "deep work" blocks were shorter and more fragmented than I'd claimed in stand-ups.
The timeline view inside the dashboard is where the real insight lives. You can zoom into any hour of any day, see exactly which app occupied the foreground, and cross-reference that against idle periods. Categorisation rules let you label URL patterns and window titles as any bucket you define — and those labels retroactively colour your entire history the moment you save them.
- Zero-upload privacy: no account required, no cloud sync, no analytics phoning home
- Modular watcher architecture: browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, editor plugins for VS Code and Vim, a dedicated macOS watcher for native apps
- Retroactive categorisation: tag rules apply to historical data, so your taxonomy compounds in value over time
- REST API: every event bucket is queryable, enabling custom dashboards or integrations with your own scripts, Obsidian, or spreadsheets
- Actively maintained: the GitHub repo sees regular releases and has a responsive contributor community
Is ActivityWatch free?
Yes — ActivityWatch is completely free, open source, and MIT licensed. There is no paid tier, no premium unlock, and no subscription. You can audit every line of code on GitHub. The project is sustained by community donations and volunteer contributors, not by monetising your behaviour data.
Who should use ActivityWatch?
Freelancers and consultants who need verifiable billing data without manual timers will get immediate payback. If you have ever stared at an invoice and genuinely wondered whether you worked six or eight hours on a project, ActivityWatch resolves that ambiguity with a timestamped log. Developers in particular benefit from the VS Code and terminal watchers, which produce per-repository breakdowns that map neatly onto commit history.
Privacy-first users who want the self-awareness benefits of RescueTime but refuse to hand their browsing history to a third-party server will find ActivityWatch the only credible alternative at this price point. It also suits researchers, academics, and writers doing deep-focus work who want quantitative feedback on how much uninterrupted time they actually get versus how much they imagine they get.
ActivityWatch is not a fit for teams that need shared reporting or manager-level oversight — it is a personal instrument, not workforce-monitoring software, and it makes no apology for that.
What are the best ActivityWatch alternatives?
The most polished paid alternative on macOS is Timing (subscription, Mac-only), which offers a smoother categorisation UI, invoice export, and calendar integration that ActivityWatch currently lacks. RescueTime is the cloud-based incumbent: its reporting is more accessible for non-technical users, but your data lives on their servers and the free tier is heavily gated. Toggl Track and Clockify are excellent for intentional, project-scoped timing but require you to start and stop timers manually — a habit that breaks under any real deadline pressure.
If local data sovereignty is non-negotiable, ActivityWatch wins that comparison without contest. If you need a truly turn-key experience and don't mind a subscription or syncing to the cloud, Timing is the strongest native-Mac competitor.
