Chronos 4+

Extremely straightforward and simple. Create a Project. Create a ticket. Ticket has a timer. Start. Stop. That’s the entire app. No invoicing, no rates, no nothing else. Basically a hierarchal list of timers.

The only things I’d like to see added are a log for each timer (record of start/stop times), and an ability to adjust timer logs manually.

As a freelancer, I need to track my time. However, I despise apps that promise to automatically track your time, as I always would end up having to dig through the logs to sort stuff out.

Chronos has the perfect set of features for me, without too much complexity. It’s just one of those apps that makes you wonder why developers would build anything else. The menubar helper is really sweet, too.

Two things would make it perfect for me. First, it hasn’t been updated since August 2013. Although it still performs perfectly, the UI is looking a bit dated and I like to see some ongoing development. The developer is still writing apps though, so let’s hope that he returns to Chronos sometime soon. Because of this apparent abandonment, I’ve tried and failed to find a suitable replacement that would “stick". The other change? It would be lovely if you could hide the dock icon.

Overall, it's a great app with perfect functionality, and I will continue to use it, praise it, and hope that it gets some love soon.

I have tried about 5 different apps to track my time as a freelancer, ranging from free to $15 and I have been disappointed by all of them. This is the first app that is covering all the things I need - ability to create client categories, projects under those categories, ability to start and stop time AND it stops the time on its own if it there is no activity (you set the idle limit). You can also add notes for each project and export your stats. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. A really helpful app for the money.