Frequently Asked Questions

Studio Timer is a macOS menu bar app that automatically tracks the time you spend in your creative apps. Open DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, Photoshop, or any of the other supported apps and it quietly starts counting, figures out which project you're working on, and files the hours as sessions. From there you get a dashboard, insights, project profitability, and a full billing pipeline: drag sessions onto clients, generate invoice PDFs, and mark them paid.

No manual timers, no start/stop buttons to forget, no screen recording.

Nothing. Studio Timer is free, forever, with every feature included. There's no Pro tier, no trial, no nag screens. If it earns a place in your workflow and you want to help cover what it costs to run, there's an optional Development Fund. The app is 100% free either way.

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer, on Apple Silicon Macs. It lives in the menu bar as a small stopwatch icon; click it to open the full window.

By design. The Mac App Store runs every app inside a sealed box that can't see or talk to the other apps on your Mac. That keeps those apps contained, but it's the exact opposite of what Studio Timer does: its whole job is to notice which creative app you're working in and read the name of the current project. An app in that sealed box isn't allowed to do either, so Studio Timer couldn't live there without losing the one thing it's for.

A direct download is the right home for it instead, and it's just as safe. The app is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, which means Apple has checked it for malware and macOS trusts it to run. It also updates itself automatically, so you stay current without the store. Download the DMG, drag Studio Timer to your Applications folder, and you're set.

A tiny background helper checks which app is frontmost every couple of seconds, using Apple's standard NSWorkspace API (the same one macOS uses to know what's in your Dock). If the frontmost app is one of the supported creative apps, the clock runs. When you switch away or close the app, the session wraps up and is saved.

That's the whole trick: it watches which app has focus, never what's inside the app's window.

Each supported app has its own polite way of asking. Resolve is asked through its own scripting API, Final Cut and Logic answer over AppleScript, Adobe apps expose the open document name, Lightroom's active album is read from its local catalog, Avid from your project files, and Blender from its recent-files list.

In every case Studio Timer reads the project or document name only. It never opens, parses, or copies the contents of your work.

These twelve, currently:

No. Studio Timer only reacts to the twelve creative apps above. Your browser, email, chat, games, and everything else are invisible to it. Time in unsupported apps is simply never recorded.

Optional idle detection notices when your keyboard and mouse have been quiet past a threshold you set, pauses the clock, and asks when you're back whether to keep or discard that idle stretch. It uses the system's "seconds since last input" counter, so it knows that you've been idle, never what you typed.

Yes. If the app wasn't running or you worked somewhere unsupported, add a manual session with a name, duration, and app. It flows into the dashboard, insights, and billing exactly like tracked time.

No. Never. Studio Timer takes no screenshots, captures no video, and never even asks macOS for the Screen Recording permission. If you check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording, you won't find Studio Timer there, because it has no reason to be.

All it observes is which of your creative apps is frontmost and the name of the open project.

No. There is no keylogging of any kind. Idle detection asks macOS one question: "how long since the last keyboard or mouse input?" It gets back a number of seconds, never the keys themselves. Studio Timer also never requests the Accessibility permission that input-monitoring tools require.

No. It reads project and document names so your sessions are labeled usefully ("Sonic TV Edit", not "Untitled"). The contents of your timelines, photos, compositions, and files are never opened or read.

No. Sessions, projects, clients, and invoices live in plain JSON files on your Mac and are never uploaded anywhere. There's no account, no cloud sync, no analytics on your work habits.

The app touches the network for exactly two things: a once-a-day check of studiotimer.io for updates, and an anonymous crash report if the app itself crashes. Neither includes your tracked data.

Six fields: the date, the project name, which app you were in, the duration, and the start and end times. That's the entire record. You can open the file yourself and read it: ~/Library/Application Support/StudioTimer/sessions.json

Any time. Delete individual sessions from the archive inside the app, or delete the whole StudioTimer folder from Application Support and it's gone. It's your Mac and your data; nothing is held anywhere else.

• Automation, for a handful of apps (Final Cut, Logic, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign). macOS will ask "Studio Timer wants to control…" once per app; this is how it reads the open project's name.
• Notifications, optional, for break reminders and the "welcome back from idle" prompt.
• Login item, so tracking resumes automatically after a restart. Visible and revocable in System Settings.

It never asks for Screen Recording, Accessibility, camera, microphone, contacts, or your location.

That's Apple's standard wording for AppleScript access. Studio Timer sends those apps a single scripted question, "what's the name of the open document?", so it can label your session. It doesn't click buttons, change settings, or touch your work.

Time tracking keeps working; watching the frontmost app needs no permission at all. Without Automation access to a given app, Studio Timer may not learn your project's name there, so sessions can come in unlabeled and you can rename them yourself. You can grant or revoke any of it later in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

Nothing, happily. Studio Timer recognizes apps by their bundle identity, not by version number, so Premiere 2025 becoming Premiere 2026 or Resolve 19 becoming 20 keeps tracking without any change. Yearly Adobe renames have come and gone without breaking detection.

Your data, settings, and granted permissions carry through macOS updates; they live in your user folder and in System Settings, which Apple preserves. If a major new macOS release ever changes an API Studio Timer relies on, a fix ships through the built-in updater. The app targets macOS 14 and newer.

Through the standard Sparkle updater used by most indie Mac apps. It checks studiotimer.io once a day, and when there's a new version you choose when to install it. Updates are cryptographically signed, so the app only ever accepts builds published by the developer. There's also a manual "Check for Updates…" item in the menu.

No. Studio Timer is free in perpetuity. The Development Fund exists precisely so it can stay that way.