Best basic time-tracking iOS app?

March 1, 2015 4:24 PM

I'm looking for a basic time-tracking iOS app, to keep track of how much time I spend on which work-related activities. Older suggestions either cost a lot of money, or don't seem to be friendly enough. I don't need to be able to make invoices or anything.

It would be nice if I could set up different categories (e.g., 'grading', 'prep work', 'in class', 'research', etc.) It would be nice if it was dead-easy to use (e.g., select the category, push a big green button to start timing, push some other big button to stop). Cheap is good, but I'm willing to pay a couple of bucks if it actually works. (Conceivably more, but this is just for my entertainment, so I'd at least like to be able to try it out for a while for not much money.)

posted by leahwrenn to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

It's not a time-tracking app per se, but you could rig up a workflow in Workflow ($2.99) to do something like this.

I'd set up a workflow that either presents a list of categories (or alternately asks for freeform typed input, depending on what exactly I need to do). It then takes that input and logs it and the time to a text file. You can turn this into a button that lives on your home screen.

So then you have a text file that's a list of activities and times. Once a day or week or whatever makes sense for you, you could take the text file and import it to a spreadsheet to calculate the time spent on each activity. It's probably also possible to rig some up Pythonista ($6.99) and Workflow to automate this process as well.

Granted, this is more complicated than a simple time-tracking app that may or may not fit your needs, but it's customizable and and you could use it for a lot more stuff than just keeping track of your time.
posted by brentajones at 5:03 PM on March 1, 2015

Hours isn't super cheap, but goes on sale pretty often.
posted by backwards guitar at 5:37 PM on March 1, 2015

Lumen Trails is very powerful (they call it an "omni tracker", not just a time tracker, and it can track just about anything quantifiable, it seems). It's pricy (list price $19.99) but drops down to free semi-regularly (looks like once a month or more).
posted by Lexica at 6:04 PM on March 1, 2015

My lawyer-friend uses Toggl, which looks to be free and dead simple. She uses it for tracking time spent on client activities, so I assume it could work similarly for you. There's an iOS app as well as a browser extension.
posted by homesickness at 6:48 PM on March 1, 2015

I use HoursTracker Pro and it meets the dead-easy criterion very well. It's a little on the pricey side ($8.99), but there is a free version that might be good enough for you....
posted by Mr Stickfigure at 6:55 PM on March 1, 2015