Which Time Tracker application do you recommend?

Question

I have to do three or four jobs a day, and each has several parts. I want a time tracker tool to help me know how much time I've spent on each part and each job overall.

I've found some like gnotime and hamster.

what application do you recommend for such a case?

Answer 1

I've grown fond of Hamster, and used it for tracking how long I worked on a Summer of Code project. What's most useful is to add it to your panel (right-click; Add to Panel; double-click on time Tracker). When you want to start/stop/change tasks, just hit Super+H and type what you are doing.

It makes some pretty nice statistics for you, too, and you can export them as HTML to send to others. You can categorize parts of a job into groups to keep track of what exactly you're doing at the time.

Each task is labeled as [task]@[job]. For example, you could have dev@project, doc@project, etc. Hamster will do some auto-completion on these as well so most of the time you only need to type a few characters. Tags can be added to tasks as well for further categorization.

Its home page is http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/about/ and it can be found in the package hamster-applet .

Screenshot (located here) by Toms Bauģis

Answer 2

I recommend Emacs with Org-Mode, installed by default together with emacs. Here is a screenshot of a Org-Mode buffer:

Why Emacs + Org-Mode? to avoid context switch, keeping you in the flow state!!! Sounds a bit radical, right?, I know, but I realized that -- in practice!

When I give Org-Mode a chance I completely abandoned my old way of work and started keep me more focus on what really matter (code). My old workflow was:

• Stop code and go mark as done some items;
• Switch to the opened browser, looking for the remember the milk opened TAB;
• Check my TODO tasks for that day and check OUT done items;
• go back to my editor;
• finally, restart the work (may take some more minutes to deeply focus again).

With Org-Mode, I just need to switch to the Org-Mode buffer, pressing Ctrl + x b, and mark items as DONE -- switching back to my previous buffer. No more browser (or external app) + editor.

I also would like to suggest to adopt The Pomodoro Technique, a really simple technique to get the most out of time management. Its more simple then GTD and easy to use in Emacs + Org-Mode: Put a timer of 25 minutes in all your tasks and Org-Mode will alert you always a task end. Better then ever!

Answer 3

A good one that I have used in the past is Klok, an adobe air application. It works great for tracking all your different projects, and giving you charts and graphs to break down how you're spending your time. The free version only exports timesheets in MS Excel format -- they want you to buy the full version for html and xml export.

Answer 4

Have you tried toggl

Its an online app but it has a native linux client

Answer 5

I use gtimelog.

Well. I wrote gtimelog. So it works for me. YMMV. I'm not the best software maintainer, I'm afraid.

Answer 6

I like Hamster very much.

Answer 7

Hamster is rather nice if you want one that's got a panel applet. There is another one that is written in Java called jTimeSched. This one has been useful on a thumb drive because I can run it on Windows, Mac and Linux, provided the host computer has Java installed. (It is available here and is not in the repositories.)

Answer 8

arbtt is an automatic rule based time tracker. It looks at the active window titles on your desktop and automatically logs the title. It can catagorize the titles based on how you configure it, and then it can report back stats.

So it might report back how much time is spent on a webdomain, in vim, and on facebook so you can look at your productivity.

Answer 9

Yes, I'd also recommend TSheets. It's simple to switch back and forth from your jobs to accurately account for the time spent on each project. I also like that it has a Who's Working widget where I can see who on my team is working on what project in real time.

http://www.tsheets.com/workforce-management.html#whos_working

Answer 10

For all fans of Harvest (getharvest.com) i recommend simple gtk application:

https://github.com/tkowalewski/harvest-gtk

Answer 11

If you access to a web server Kimai is a nice PHP/SQL web application. You configure different clients and for each of them different projects and also different tasks. Also it can be used by many users. The information can be exported to PDF, CSV and XLS.

Answer 12

If you have Internet: HarvestApp is one the best tools out there. Thats is if you don't mind time tracking on a web-app.

sidenote: They have free trial accounts, too.

Answer 13

You may also try Timedoctor.com.

That is what we use in our computers now running on different platforms. I was actually tasked to do research on the best time tracking software today and out of many referrals and suggestions “Time Doctor” is the only software which I could grade as “A”.

Answer 14

TSheets time tracking software has exactly what you're looking for. You'll have the ability to list an unlimited number of jobs for each day and specifically account for the time on the tasks within each job code. Also, it's easy to generate reports that show the breakdown of each task and the project overall.

http://www.tsheets.com/overview-of-online-timesheet-software.php#multi_job_codes

Answer 15

KTimeTracker is a nice tool and is supported by Canonical.

Answer 16

Talygen is highly recommended for all those who love to track their time and activities. I've been using Talygen for a couple of months. It helps me track multiple projects.

Answer 17

We use http://projectsputnik.com. It has amazing time tracking features plus great project management functionality. Additionally you can mark some of time entries as billable and see the ratio of billable hours to total worked hours.

Answer 18

From my experience, I would suggest Replicon time clock software for time tracking.

Answer 19

I prefer Rachota. It is a jar file with a simple GUI. http://rachota.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

It stores time sheets in XML and there is some options for tracking teams etc. Just download it, place it in your favorite folder and run as java from command line or launcher icon

java -jar /...folders.../rachota.jar

Answer 20

You can also try Fanurio. It is working on multiple platforms including Ubuntu. After installing it they will give a 14 days trial. If you like it you can buy the software to unlock the unlimited edition.