Automatic time tracking is useful for one reason: you don't remember your day well. By Friday, Tuesday afternoon is a blur of “the client thing, then email, then that bug”. A tracker that noticed what you worked on can draft the timesheet for you.
The catch is what it has to notice. Some tools take screenshots every few minutes. Some log keystrokes and mouse activity. Many send all of it to a server. For a freelancer with client work on screen, or anyone who opens a bank or a doctor's portal during the day, that's a lot to hand over to fill in a timesheet.
What automatic tracking needs to know
To draft an entry like “Lumen: export bug, 13:00 to 15:30”, a tracker needs:
- which app was in front, and when;
- something that tells one piece of work from another: a window title (
export.swift — lumen-api), a web page (linear.app/lumen/issue/LUM-161), a repository, a branch.
That's it. A screenshot adds nothing a window title doesn't already say, and a keystroke count says nothing about which project you were on.
What Hourbrook records
Every two seconds, Hourbrook notes:
- the app in front and its window title, read through macOS Accessibility;
- the web page you're on in Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge and Vivaldi, through Automation (Firefox gives it the window title only);
- when you're away: after five minutes without keyboard or mouse (you choose the minutes), unless a call is running, a video or slideshow is full screen, or Claude Code, Codex or a build is busy;
- calls, from whether a call app is using the microphone;
- meetings, if you connect the calendars on your Mac.
It draws the day as a brook, one stream per app, with a lane of “memories” beside it: what was in front, from when to when. You pick memories and log them, or accept a drafted entry. Drafts come from a small model that lives on your Mac and learns from entries you logged; every draft shows why it was made. The walk-through is on how it works.
You can turn window titles and web addresses off in Settings › Privacy. Drafts get vaguer without them, but tracking still works.
What it never records
- No screenshots. There's no screen-capture code in the app, and it never asks for Screen Recording permission.
- No keystrokes. It knows that you used the keyboard recently, to tell when you're away, not what you typed.
- No audio. The microphone is never opened. Hourbrook reads two system flags that say whether an app is using it.
- Password managers such as 1Password, Bitwarden and Keychain Access are skipped.
- Private browser windows are kept only as “Private window”, with no title or address, when Hourbrook can tell they're private. Know the limits: Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge and Vivaldi are checked when web addresses are on; Safari's check reads its English Window menu, and when it can't tell, the address is dropped but the title kept; Firefox is judged by its title.
- Apps and sites you exclude in “Never record these apps” and “Never record these sites” leave no trace.
- Coding agents' conversations. If you choose to let it read Claude Code's and Codex's session logs (off until you say yes), it takes times, folders and branches, never what you or the agent wrote.
Where the record lives, and what leaves the Mac
Everything above goes into a database on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/Hourbrook. Sync never sends it.
What can leave the Mac is what you choose:
- Entries you log (title, times, project, notes, tags, billable), with the projects, clients and tags they use, and your own tasks and plans. These sync to your account so the web dashboard and your other Macs see them. They're stored on Hourbrook's server, which runs on Cloudflare, and they aren't end-to-end encrypted.
- Answers you ask an AI app for, if you connect Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Cursor to the local MCP server: logged entries, totals and agent time per repository; minutes per app only if you turn that on. Never titles or addresses.
On a team, people see the entries others chose to log, never the memories behind them. The privacy page has the full table.
Five ways to check it yourself
Claims are cheap. These checks take a few minutes each and work on any tracker, not just ours.
1. Look at the permissions it holds
Open System Settings › Privacy & Security. A tracker that captures your screen has to be listed under Screen & System Audio Recording. Hourbrook isn't, because it never asks, and it isn't under Microphone either. It does need Accessibility for window titles, and Automation for each browser whose address you want.
2. Watch the microphone dot
macOS shows an orange dot in the menu bar whenever an app is recording audio. Join a call with Hourbrook running: the dot belongs to your call app, and Control Centre names which one.
3. Watch its network traffic
Install a firewall that shows connections per app, such as LuLu (free, from Objective-See) or Little Snitch, and leave the tracker running for a day. For Hourbrook, every host it talks to and when is listed on the privacy page, under Check it yourself, with how to watch it with nettop too.
4. Read the database
In Settings › Privacy › Your data, “Where it lives” shows the file in Finder. It's an ordinary SQLite file: open it with sqlite3 or any SQLite browser and look at what was recorded. The same screen exports everything as JSON, with or without activity.
5. Delete it and see what stays
Settings › Privacy can delete activity older than 30 days, 90 days or a year, or all of it at once. Logged entries and projects stay; only the raw activity behind them goes. (The daily backups on your Mac roll over after seven days.)
What we can't prove to you yet
- The sync test isn't public. Hourbrook's entry sync has an automated test that plants a secret app, window title and web address in the activity, runs a sync, and fails if any of them shows up in a request. It runs with the rest of our tests, but the code isn't open, so for now you have our word, the description on the privacy page, and check 3.
- That test covers entry sync. Tasks, invoices and Jira aren't in it yet. They send what you made in the app, not activity.
- No certification. There's no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report. It's a beta.
- Private-window detection can miss, as described above.
If any of these is a deal-breaker, the comparisons list trackers that are stronger on certification and maturity. And if you're choosing for a team, read why Hourbrook has no productivity score.