Unlocked Time

A native macOS menu bar app that tracks how long your Mac is unlocked and reports daily and weekly totals against limits you set.

Screenshots

Light	Dark

These use generated sample data rather than real hours. Run the app with --demo to reproduce them.

What it shows

• Today's total against the daily maximum.
• This week's total against the weekly maximum.
• Remaining time, or a red over-limit amount.
• The moment the weekly limit was reached, once it is passed.
• A trend chart of the last 7 days or 8 weeks, with the limit marked.
• In the History window, a trend chart that scrolls back through all history and zooms out to a year of days or ten years of weeks, or a calendar of a year of days.
• A matching list of those days or weeks.
• Which days or weeks are marked as PTO.
• Manual pause and resume.

History

The list covers everything recorded, newest first. Clicking a week opens that week's days, and clicking a day opens the individual sessions worked that day, with start and end times.

The trend chart starts on the last 7 days or 8 weeks. Scroll it sideways to go back in time, and pinch, use the magnifier buttons, or press ⌘+ and ⌘− to zoom between fixed spans: from a week to a year of days, or from 8 weeks to ten years of weeks. Zooming keeps the selected day or week in place, and selecting one in the list scrolls the chart to it. Once zoomed out past a few weeks, a line shows the trailing 7-day or 4-week average.

The Chart / Calendar switch in the trend card's header swaps the chart for a calendar: a year of days as a grid of squares, one column per week, like a GitHub contributions graph. Shading deepens with the hours tracked, in quarters of the daily limit. Days over the daily limit are red, in four shades that deepen with the overtime: up to 30 minutes, up to an hour, up to two hours, and more than two hours over. PTO days are grey. It opens on the 12 months ending today; the arrows step back and forward a year at a time, through all recorded history. Hover over a square for its date and hours, and click it to select that day, or in Weeks mode the week containing it. The calendar always shows days, so in Weeks mode too its summary is of days.

Under the chart, a summary covers whatever is in view: the total, the average day or week, how many were over the limit and by how much in total, and the number of PTO days. Averages leave out days or weeks without tracked time, and the one still in progress. The over-limit day count uses the same completed workdays. Day averages and counts also leave out weekends and PTO days, so they compare with the daily limit. Time tracked on those days still counts towards the total and the overage.

Sessions can be corrected: right-click one to edit or delete it, or use the plus button in the sessions column to add a session to the selected day. The session running now cannot be edited, since it has no end yet.

PTO

Right-click a day or week in the history list to mark it as PTO, or to clear the mark. Marking a week marks all seven of its days, and a week shows as PTO only when every day is marked.

PTO is a label by default. It does not change any total, and time tracked on a PTO day is still counted.

With PTO reduces weekly maximum on, each PTO weekday lowers that week's maximum by the configured PTO day value, so a week with a day off is judged against a smaller ceiling instead of looking artificially under. Weekend days never reduce it, and the result never drops below zero.

Tracking

A session runs while the app is open and the screen is unlocked. It stops when the screen locks, the display sleeps, or the user session becomes inactive, and resumes on unlock or wake.

With Pause when idle on, a session also stops after the configured number of minutes without keyboard or mouse input. The stop is backdated to the last input, so the idle stretch is never counted, and tracking resumes as soon as you use the Mac again. Idle is measured from input alone, so watching a video counts as idle.

The app only observes these events while it is running. It cannot reconstruct activity from periods when it was closed. After an unexpected exit, an open session is closed at its last one-minute heartbeat.

Settings

Set the daily and weekly maximum with separate hour and minute adjusters, in 5-minute steps.

PTO reduces weekly maximum lowers a week's ceiling for each PTO weekday, by the PTO day value. Off by default.

Pause when idle turns idle detection on or off, and Idle after sets the threshold in minutes. Idle pausing defaults to on with a 10-minute threshold.

Start at login registers the app as a login item, so tracking resumes after a restart without opening it manually.

Import work log reads a plain text file in the work log format. Exact duplicates are skipped, so importing the same file twice is safe.

History and settings are stored locally:

~/Library/Application Support/UnlockedTime/history.json

Work log format

Import and export share one plain text format:

# a hash starts a comment
2026-08-17 08:20-14:30+16:00-23:30
2026-08-19 PTO
2026-08-20 PTO 09:00-11:00

Each line is a date followed by a PTO marker, one or more intervals, or both. Intervals are joined with +. Blank lines and comments are ignored, open intervals are rejected, and a session running to midnight ends at 24:00.

Export in the History window writes this format, so anything exported can be imported again. Times are written to the minute, and a session in progress is written up to the current time.

Build

Requires macOS 14 or newer and Xcode Command Line Tools.

./build-app.sh
open "dist/Unlocked Time.app"

Import a work log at launch:

open -n "dist/Unlocked Time.app" --args --import ~/time_worked.txt

Run against generated sample data instead of your own history, as used for the screenshots:

open -n "dist/Unlocked Time.app" --args --demo

The app has no Dock icon. Keep it running for tracking to continue.

The app icon is generated rather than stored as an opaque asset. To change it, edit Tools/make-icon.swift, then:

swift Tools/make-icon.swift
iconutil -c icns App/AppIcon.iconset -o App/AppIcon.icns

Tests

swift test

Release

Set both bundle versions, then test, build, and merge the version change before creating the tag:

Tools/set-version.sh 0.0.5 5
swift test
./build-app.sh

Tag the merged commit and push only the tag:

git tag v0.0.5
git push origin v0.0.5

Do not create the GitHub release manually. Pushing the tag runs the release workflow, which checks that the tag is on main and matches CFBundleShortVersionString before publishing the release.

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.

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Built with GitHub Copilot, from the first prototype through to the current app.