Daily is meant for a broad target group: from graphic designers to consultants and software developers to lawyers. If you can answer YES to all questions below, you can absolutely benefit from Daily:

1. Are you a Mac user?
2. Is it important for you (or your employer) to have insights in your daily activities?
3. Are you performing most of your work behind a computer?
4. By average, are you working on three or more different activities per day?

Daily works by asking what you're doing. This is what is called "sample-based time tracking". Together with sessions indicating when you've started working, for how long and when you've stopped working, Daily is able to calculate the time spent per activity.

Most time tracking solutions work either fully manually or automatically. Manual tools (such as Toggl) are great when you have the disciple to change the "active" project as soon as you start working on a different project. When you forget to do so (which always happens now and then), recovering will be hard and results will be inaccurate. On the other end, fully automatic tools (e.g. by detecting the name of an open Word document) sound great but the problem arises when you try to link these automatically created activities with your "own" labels. This still requires human work and becomes very technical.

Daily offers best of both worlds: you still provide the activities, giving you the control of the names displayed on your time sheets but the calculation is done automatically for you.

Using the dashboard you can either click the previous/next buttons in the header or you can type in the specific day by clicking the date label. This field also understands relative days. For example, typing "1-9" will navigate directly to January 9 and "last monday" directly navigates to last monday.

Yes, you can. Open Daily's preferences, click the "Dialog" tab and change the "Dialog appearance" setting. Note that you cannot change the interval to a specific time. Pop-up intervals are always randomly created, resulting in greater accuracy.

When you dismiss the activity pop-up by clicking the "X" button on the lower left, no sample will be recorded. However, the total time worked will not be affected. This button enables you to "skip" a dialog and may become useful when working on a temporary activity not worth registering.

Daily may become inactive after a configurable amount of time. This threshold can be configured by changing the "ask after inactivity" value. Daily monitors your activity by tracking your mouse (or another pointer device). If you haven't moved your mouse more than the configured threshold, Daily will become inactive. When you start moving your mouse again it will ask what you've been doing.

Other than the "ignore" (X) button in the "sample" dialog, this will cause Daily to dismiss the inactivity period and creates a gap within that day. For example, you might want to click the "ignore" (X) button after lunch enabling you to skip registering the time during the inactivity period. The total time worked will be affected when clicking this button.

Silent mode suppresses sample pop-ups by automatically applying a predefined activity. This is handy when, for example, going to meetings or giving a presentation. Silent mode can be enabled via the dashboard or via a key command.

The auto apply function applies the selected activity (in the drop down box when Daily asks you what you’re doing) after a specific amount of seconds. This is handy when you don’t want to apply the same activity yourself manually.

In the preferences you can change this setting. When enabed, Daily will automatically starts registering when Daily starts. This setting won't have effect when the scheduler is enabled and prohibits registering.

The scheduler is a very handy function which enables you to only register at specific times. For example, you might want to start registring at week days from 9.00AM to 5.00PM. When you start working at 8.50AM, Daily will refuse registering until it becomes 9.00AM. At 5.00PM Daily will automatically stop registering (unless the "overtime modus" is enabled, see next question). Note that the scheduler can be overridden manually by manually switching between registration modes.

Normally Daily stops registering when the scheduler is set to stop at a specific time. However, when the "enable overtime modus" is enabled, Daily will continue to register until you stop working on your computer for a while. When returning, Daily will behave according to the scheduler's setting. This feature is handy when working a bit longer than expected without the risk of losing registered time.

You can control Daily directly using your keyboard, even when another application is active. Keyboard shortcuts can be changed via the preferences window. The following keyboard shortcuts are enabled by default:
• Open dashboard (⋀⇧D)
• Focus visible dialog (⋀⇧F)
• Apply selected activity (⋀⇧S)
• Toggle registration mode (⋀⇧R)
• Toggle silent mode (⋀⇧Z)

You have two options:
1) Simply double click the icon in the status bar to keep it open, even when you're switching between other applications, or;
2) Make sure the "Keep window visible after losing focus" preference is switched on. This will cause the window to be open constanly unless you close it again by clicking on the icon in the status bar.

Follow the steps below to merge activities. Note that you cannot undo this.

1) Open the Activity Manager by clicking “Manage Activities…” in the configuration menu. You can access the configuration menu by hovering your mouse over the dashboard’s bottom bar and clicking the configuration icon;
2) Click the source activity you want to merge;
3) Drag the source activity on the target activity and release your mouse;
4) Daily will ask you if you want to merge the activities, click “OK” to confirm this.

Additionally, renaming an activity to a name that already exists, will also cause Daily to ask if you want to merge the activities.

Version 1.6.0 introduces the ability to manually add, edit and delete time entries. Note that you can only do this when the dashboard in set to Day mode. To add a time entry, click on the plus (+) button in the dashboard. To edit a time entry, click on a time entry and enter a new duration. The duration can have the following formats:

• Use “+30m” to add 30 minutes
• Use “-1h 30m” to subtract an hour and a half
• Use “0” to remove a time entry
• Use “45” to apply 45 minutes
• Leave empty to add a new sample

This is caused by Daily’s (sample-based) algorithm and is expected behaviour. It basically tries to improve time entries with new data collected.

This mechanism is best explained using an example:
Let's say you started working on 8AM and stopped working at 10AM. During these two hours, Daily asked you 6 times what you have been doing. Providing an activity results in a sample to be recorded. This means that each sample represents 20 minutes (2 hours divided by 6). You have been working on 3 different activities during these two hours: Project A (1 sample), Project B (2 samples) and Project C (3 samples). This results in the following time sheet:
Project A: 20 minutes (1x 20 minutes)
Project B: 40 minutes (2x 20 minutes)
Project C 1 hour (3x 20 minutes)

This is why earlier entered activities are recalculated every time a sample is created.

Note that manually adding an activity without providing a duration effectively means you are adding a sample. For this reason, you will likely notice the duration of other activities to change too.

We are constantly improving Daily and for that, usage statistics are very valuable. Note that these statistics are anonymous and do not contain activities or other personal information. What they do contain is basic information about your computer (e.g. model number and software version), Daily's preferences and software version.

Daily stores all data in a folder located at ~/Library/Containers/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main. It is best to run this command in order to create a backup:
cd ~/Library/Containers/; zip -ryq ~/Desktop/DailyBackup.zip nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main/.
After running this command, you will find a ZIP file named DailyBackup.zip on your desktop.

If you want to migrate data to another Mac, copy DailyBackup.zip to this Mac and make sure to have Daily run at least once (so the directory structure is properly set up). Next, run the following command. Note that this will replace existing data if any.
cd ~/Library/Containers/; unzip -oq ~/Desktop/DailyBackup.zip
Restart Daily and you will notice data has been migrated.

Version 1.8.0 and later provides support for Apple's AppleScript mechanism. This enables you to automate these tasks:
• Getting and setting the current registration mode
• Adding, editing and removing entries
• Export data as CSV and JSON
• Add, rename, merge, enable, disable and export activities

Refer to other FAQ items for AppleScript examples. The website macosxautomation.com describes in detail how AppleScript scripts can be used.

You can use Apple's osascript tool for this. For example:

osascript -e 'tell application "Daily" to print json with report "summary" from (current date) - (1 * days) to (current date)'

Please refer to the following examples:

tell application "Daily"

set InOneHour to (current date) + (1 * hours)

get registration mode

set registration mode "off"
set registration mode "silent" with activity "Meeting"
set registration mode "silent" with activity "Customer presentation" that ends InOneHour
set registration mode "ask"

end tell

Please refer to the following examples:

tell application "Daily"

set Yesterday to (current date) - (1 * days)

add "Documentation"
add "Homework" with duration 10
add "Phone call" with duration 10 for Yesterday

edit "Lunch" with duration 15
edit "Coffee" with duration 15 for Yesterday

end tell

Please refer to the following examples:

tell application "Daily"

set Yesterday to (current date) - (1 * days)
set Today to (current date)

set Location to choose folder with prompt "Please select a folder where you want to store the exported files:"

export csv with report "summary" from Yesterday to Today with delimiter "," to file POSIX path of Location & "summary.csv"

export csv with report "daily overview" from Yesterday to Today with delimiter "," to file POSIX path of Location & "daily overview.csv"

export json with report "summary" from Yesterday to Today to file POSIX path of Location & "summary.json"

export json with report "daily overview" from Yesterday to Today to file POSIX path of Location & "daily overview.json"

export toggl from Yesterday to Today to file POSIX path of Location & "toggl.csv" with email "hello@dailytimeapp.com" using format "%client%: %project%" and fallback "task" with tags "daily, applescript" billable "yes" and user "daily"

print json with report "summary" from Yesterday to Today
print json with report "daily overview" from Yesterday to Today

end tell

Please refer to the following examples:

tell application "Daily"

add activity "Diner"

rename activity "Diner" to "Breakfast"

merge activity "Diner" into "Breakfast"

enable activity "Breakfast"

disable activity "Coffee"

delete activity "Breakfast"

export activities to file POSIX file "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/YourUsername/Desktop/activities.json"

print activities

end tell

Daily has a built-in crash reporting mechanism. This mechanism will ask you to send a report about a crash the next time you start Daily again. We strongly recommend to send these reports as it helps us identifying issues and solving them.

If Daily does not crash but you think it is behaving incorrectly, we recommend you to send an email to hello@dailytimeapp.com explaining the issue you are encountering, preferably including any debug logs.

In order to get these debug logs, please do the following:
1. Open Daily’s preferences via its main window by clicking on the configuration icon at the bottom (hover your mouse over the bottom if you do not see the configuration icon);
2. Enable the “Enable debug log” checkbox in the tab named “General”;
3. Reproduce the issue to make sure log entries are being added to the log files;
4. Open a Terminal instance and execute the following command that will create a file called “DailyLogs.zip” on your desktop:
zip -rj ~/Desktop/DailyLogs.zip ~/Library/Containers/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main/Data/Library/Logs/Daily/.
5. Attach the file “DailyLogs.zip” available on your desktop to the email.

If possible, indicate the date and time the issue occurred so we can better analyse the log files. Also make sure to disable Daily's debug feature again as it might slow down Daily.

Daily uses technologies only available on modern versions of macOS. Therefore at least macOS 10.12 (Sierra) is required.

Daily is only available for Mac. However, if an iOS version is a must-have for you, please let us know by emailing us as we might release an iOS version in the future.

Daily is only available for Mac. However, if a Windows version is a must-have for you, please let us know by emailing us as we might release a Windows version in the future.

Daily Time Tracking is a trade name of Niels Mouthaan IT Services, which is registered in the Commercial Register of The Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK) with number 71314490.

Niels Mouthaan IT Services
Elisabeth Wolffstraat 75-1
1053TT Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Niels Mouthaan IT Services is registered at the Dutch tax office (Belastingdienst) with number NL124383658B02.