RescueTime

I like the desktop RescueTime application but the app for the phone does not work very well. It doesn’t tell you anything about which apps are using time and it requires GPS data so that it can tell you where you pick the phone up which I do not care about and would rather it did not force me to have to enable. It is also wildly inaccurate when it comes to the amount of time the phone has been used. Apple’s Screen Time shows I’ve used my phone for one hour today where as Rescuetime says I’ve only used it for 19 minutes - totally wrong.

I might be biased but I’ve been using RescueTime since 2008 to keep a healthy work pace, focus better, avoid distractions, and know when to stop working too much. I really think of it like a sleep tracker or a mindfulness meter and it keeps me on track- especially working remote / from home.

So far I’ve used this app for around a month and it does a good job in allowing me to track my hours on my desktop/laptop. However, with this recent update that allows “device tracking”, it isn’t what I thought it would be like. For some reason you must have location tracking on at all times in order to track your time. Also, it can’t even do that correctly. When I checked my phone at the end of the day it said I had no time on my device which was definitely wrong as shown on my apple screen time. Even then, there is no option so far to categorize the time on my phone. Right now, this new feature doesn’t add anything, but for tracking time on desktop it’s fine.