Help Center

Open the downloaded disk image, then drag Studio Timer onto the Applications folder. Open it from Applications and click Open on the one-time macOS prompt. Studio Timer then lives in your menu bar.

Don't run the app straight from the disk image. Drag it to Applications first, otherwise macOS keeps it in a read-only state and some features won't work.

Studio Timer is downloaded from the web rather than the App Store, so macOS shows a one-time prompt. The app is signed and notarized by Apple. Click Open on the prompt the first time and you won't see it again.

Studio Timer runs in your menu bar (the row of icons at the top right of your screen), shown as a small stopwatch. Click it to open the main window. There's no Dock icon by default, though you can turn one on in Settings.

Yes. Studio Timer registers itself as a login item on first launch, so it comes back to your menu bar after a restart.

When you open a supported creative app, Studio Timer detects it and starts tracking. It then waits for you to identify which project you're working on. As soon as you're working in a named project, time is added to a session for that project.

A session is logged once you finish it, for example when you close the creative app you were working in. If you keep working on the same project with the same title, time keeps adding to that one session instead of creating scattered blocks.

Yes. You can add a session by hand at any time. Give it a name, set the hours and minutes, and choose which app you were using. This is useful if Studio Timer wasn't running or you had tracking turned off.

If you turn on idle detection and your keyboard and mouse are both inactive for five minutes, Studio Timer asks whether to keep or discard that idle time. Keep it for work like watching tutorials or researching in a browser; discard it if you stepped away.

Optional notifications that nudge you to stand up and take a break after you've been working for a set amount of time. Set the interval in Settings.

In the Billing tab, drag a session onto a client. When the work is ready to bill, right-click the client and choose Generate Invoice. You can set the invoice name, hourly rate, tax, payment terms (net 15, 30, 90), and a thank-you note, then save the PDF.

Invoice generation is built in and free, like everything else. See Pricing & the Development Fund below.

Right-click the invoice and choose Mark as Paid. The status updates automatically across the Billing and Invoices tabs.

Yes. In Settings, your profile (name, email, website, location) loads into every invoice automatically. You can also set a default client and default payment terms so they apply to new invoices without re-entering them.

Nothing. Studio Timer is free, forever. Every feature is included: automatic tracking, the dashboard, insights, projects, the full billing pipeline, invoice generation, marking invoices paid, and exports. No Pro tier, no paywall, no nag screens. The next release will be fully open source.

Studio Timer costs about $158 a month to build and run. The biggest piece is the Claude subscription that writes it, plus hosting, email, the domain, and licensing. If it's useful to you and you'd like to help cover that, the Development Fund lets you chip in, one time or monthly. Entirely optional; the app is 100% free either way.

Everything is unlocked for everyone, so there's nothing left to pay for. If you have an old monthly subscription you'd like to stop, go to studiotimer.io/manage and enter your email to open the Stripe billing portal and cancel. (Or keep it going as a contribution to the Development Fund, entirely your call.)

Your tracking data and sessions stay local on your Mac. Nothing about your work leaves your machine. The app checks for updates and reports crashes anonymously. An email is only ever involved if you choose to contribute to the Development Fund.

Everything lives in this folder:

~/Library/Application Support/StudioTimer/

To open it, switch to Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder (or press ⌘⇧G), paste the path above, and press Return. Your sessions, projects, clients, and invoices are the .json files inside, and generated invoice PDFs are in the invoice_archive folder.

In the session archive you can clear a session from the list, or delete it permanently from your Mac. Sessions stay on file until you remove them.