MacTrack

A free, native macOS menu bar app that shows where your time actually goes: which apps you focus on, and which websites you spend it on. No account, no subscription, no cloud. It lives in your menu bar, stays out of the way, and keeps every byte of data on your Mac.

Most time trackers are heavy, paid, and want your data. MacTrack is the opposite: one small menu bar app, a clean read on your day, and a database that never leaves your machine.

What it does

• Tracks focused time, not open windows. Time counts only for the app you are actually in front of. Background apps never inflate your totals.
• Tracks individual websites. When you are in a browser, MacTrack credits time to the site's domain (youtube.com, github.com), so you see web time the way you experience it. Works with Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, and Vivaldi.
• Knows when you step away. Tracking pauses when you go idle or lock the screen, so a coffee break never lands on whatever you left open.
• Apps, Websites, and All. Toggle between just apps, just sites, or one merged ranking sorted by time. In the merged view the browser app drops out so its individual sites tell the real story.
• A clean daily line chart. The top items plotted across your day, with a hover scrubber for exact values. Set the chart's start and end hours in settings.
• Glanceable totals. The menu bar shows live time for whatever you are on right now. Open the popover for the full breakdown.
• Right-click to ignore. Don't want something tracked? Right-click any row and choose "Don't track." It disappears and stays gone.

Privacy

• Local-first. Your history lives in a SQLite database at ~/Library/Application Support/MacTrack/. It is never uploaded anywhere.
• Domains only. MacTrack records that you were on a domain and for how long. It never saves page titles or what you were doing on a site.
• One network call. The only thing fetched from the internet is website favicons (cached after first use). Everything else is offline.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later
• Xcode 26 or later (to build)

Build and run

The Xcode project is generated from project.yml with XcodeGen.

brew install xcodegen        # once
git clone https://github.com/Entrepenulian/MacTrack.git
cd MacTrack
xcodegen generate            # creates MacTrack.xcodeproj
open MacTrack.xcodeproj       # build & run with ⌘R

Or build from the command line:

xcodebuild -project MacTrack.xcodeproj -scheme MacTrack -configuration Release build

Launch at login can be turned on in settings.

Permissions

To measure per-website time, MacTrack reads the active tab's address through macOS Automation (Apple Events). The first time it reads a browser, macOS asks for permission. Allow it, or website time won't be recorded. You can change it later in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation, or from the gear in MacTrack.

How it works

A once-a-second sampler measures the real elapsed time between ticks and credits it to whatever is in focus: the frontmost app, and the active tab's domain if that app is a browser. Large gaps (sleep, wake) are dropped, and idle or locked time is skipped. Totals roll up per day; a lightweight per-minute series powers the chart. Writes are incremental and crash-safe (SQLite WAL), with daily backups and automatic restore.

Tech

Swift, SwiftUI, and AppKit. SQLite via the system library (no third-party dependencies). MenuBarExtra for the menu bar surface, Apple Events for browser URLs, and SMAppService for launch at login.

MacTrack/
  App/        entry point and lifecycle
  Models/     usage records, categories, chart data
  Services/   sampler, browser reader, idle detector, store, database, icons
  Design/     theme tokens, glass, formatters
  Views/      popover, header, list, chart, settings

License

MIT. See LICENSE.