beyang / thyme

Automatically track which applications you use and for how long.

Thyme

Spice up your day-to-day productivity with some free Thyme, courtesy of the team at Sourcegraph (the best way to read and explore code). Automatically track which applications you use and for how long.

• Simple CLI to track and analyze your application usage
• Detailed charts that let you profile how you spend your time
• Stores data locally, giving you full control and privacy
• Open-source, well-documented, and easily extensible

Thyme is a work in progress, so please report bugs! Want to see how it works? Dive into the source here.

Want to share what you've learned about your Thyme? Join the discussion on Twitter.

Features

Simple CLI

1. Record which applications you use every 30 seconds:

   $ while true; do thyme track -o thyme.json; sleep 30s; done;
   

2. Create charts showing application usage over time. In a new window:

   $ thyme show -i thyme.json -w stats > thyme.html
   

3. Open thyme.html in your browser of choice to see the charts below.

Application usage timeline

Detailed application window timeline

Aggregate time usage by app

Dependencies

Thyme's dependencies vary by system. See thyme dep (mentioned in the installation instructions below).

Install

1. Install Go (if you have Homebrew on macOS, you can also run brew install go) and run

   $ go get -u github.com/sourcegraph/thyme/cmd/thyme
   

   Alternatively, if you don't want to install Go, just download the thyme binary here.

2. Follow the instructions printed by thyme dep.

   $ thyme dep
   

3. Verify thyme works with

   $ thyme track
   

   This should display JSON describing which applications are currently active, visible, and present on your system.

Thyme currently supports Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Usage for Other Shells

Windows Powershell

> for(1){thyme track -o thyme.json; Start-Sleep -s 5}
> thyme show -i thyme.json -w stats | Out-File -e utf8 thyme.html

Windows DOS Command Line

> for /L %n in (0) do @(thyme track -o thyme.json && timeout /t 5 /nobreak)
> thyme show -i thyme.json -w stats > thyme.html

Use cases

Thyme was designed for developers who want to investigate their application usage to make decisions that boost their day-to-day productivity.

It can also be for other purposes such as:

• Tracking billable hours and constructing timesheets
• Studying application usage behavior in a given population

How is Thyme different from other time trackers?

There are many time tracking products and services on the market. Thyme differs from available offerings in the following ways:

• Thyme does not intend to be a fully featured time management product or service. Thyme adopts the Unix philosophy of a command-line tool that does one thing well and plays nicely with other command-line tools.

• Thyme does not require you to manually signal when you start or stop an activity. It automatically records which applications you use.

• Thyme is open source and free of charge.

• Thyme does not send data over the network. It stores the data it collects on local disk. It's up to you whether you want to share it or not.

Attribution

The Thyme logo by Anthony Bossard is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0.