App and website tracking
Track where your Mac time actually goes.
Focus Meter turns app and website usage into readable focus data: productive tools, neutral communication, distracting sites, and the patterns between them.
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App and website guide pages.
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Deep guides upgraded first: Slack, Chrome, and VS Code.
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Cloud uploads. Usage data stays on your Mac.
Communication
Slack
Most knowledge workers spend 2–4 hours a day in Slack. For many it’s the single highest-time app, easily beating out their actual editor or design tool.
Discord
Discord is where “chat” bleeds into “game” for a lot of people. The category you assign it should depend on whether it’s community/support work or not.
Zoom
Zoom time is meeting time. Seeing it as a separate bar on your weekly chart is usually a moment of honesty.
Microsoft Teams
Teams is chat + meetings + docs in one app, so the time shown is usually a mix of all three.
Gmail
Email time on Gmail is surprisingly “sticky” — a fast check becomes 20 minutes once a thread opens.
Browsers and websites
Google Chrome
Chrome is the single biggest tracking blind spot for most Mac users. Screen Time shows “Chrome: 5 hours” without any website detail — which is useless.
Safari
Safari users are often surprised by how much time they’ve “quickly checked” news sites and social media throughout the day.
Arc Browser
Arc users tend to run long sessions with many tabs open. It’s easy for a 6-hour Arc day to look productive when most of it was in one “workspace.”
Firefox
Firefox users are often privacy-conscious — which is why they care about where their focus data goes, too.
YouTube
YouTube is the biggest single distraction surface for most knowledge workers. Seeing the number in one place tends to change behavior.
Reddit’s usage pattern is a hundred two-minute visits, which adds up faster than anything else on the browser.
Twitter / X
Twitter is especially sneaky on a Mac because it usually runs in a browser tab, not a dedicated app — so most trackers miss it.
Developer tools
VS Code
For most developers, VS Code hours are the clearest measurable signal of “actually shipping.”
Xcode
iOS and Mac developers often split their day between Xcode, the Simulator, and documentation — Focus Meter makes that split visible.
Terminal
Terminal/iTerm2 time is a good signal for infra work, backend engineering, and anyone who lives in a shell.
GitHub
GitHub time (PRs, issues, code review) is one of the strongest signals of “actually doing engineering work” for most developers.
Linear
Linear time correlates with “I shipped tickets this week” more than almost any other app.
Design, docs, and music
Figma
Designers often spend 4–7 hours in Figma. It’s a strong signal of deep design work — which is why it deserves its own bucket.
Notion
Notion gets weird on usage reports — it’s wiki, docs, and project management all in one app, so a “2 hours in Notion” block could be deep writing or status-theater.
Obsidian
Obsidian users tend to have bursty sessions: long note-taking stretches during research, near-zero during build weeks.
Spotify
Spotify “time” is misleading — it’s usually open while you’re really using something else.