How do I track time spent in "Spaces"?

November 19, 2008 10:41 AM

Is there a way to keep track of how much time you spend in each "space" in Spaces in MacOS?

I would like to use different Spaces on my laptop to keep track of different activities, and at the end of the day be able to see how much time I spent in each "space". I tried looking for a utility that could do this, and haven't been able to find one. Does anyone know of a program that does this?

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

I have written a little tool that does something like this. It's at the "works-for-me" stage right now; you would have to type things in a terminal and look at a text file.

I have another works-for-me tool to summarize the output, like "this afternoon: 27m in Terminal.app, 12m in Firefox.app". That one might not work on an out-of-the-box Mac. Send a memail if you're interested and I'll put it up, too.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 11:46 AM on November 19, 2008

Best answer: Slife won't keep track of how much time you spend in each space, but it will keep track of how much time you spend on an activity, which, I think is what you're after. Available for OS X and Windows, and free.
posted by jaimev at 12:01 PM on November 19, 2008

It doesn't do exactly what you're looking to do, but Slife looks like it could help you track what applications you spend the most time in (haven't used it myself, btw). From there, you could figure out which space you spend your time in.
posted by phrayzee at 12:03 PM on November 19, 2008

Beat me on preview!
posted by phrayzee at 12:03 PM on November 19, 2008

If Slife does not work, RescueTime performs a similar function. Although Slife looks like maybe it doesn't send all that data to an outside company.
posted by mkb at 1:38 PM on November 19, 2008