For freelancers and small business owners · Mac · Free for 14 days
Tracks your time. Never your screen.
The hour you didn’t write down is the hour you don’t get paid for. Every fifteen minutes it asks; one tap logs the quarter-hour. No timer to forget.
14 days free, no card, no account · £54 once, never a subscription
What have you been doing?
Whatever you pick is logged from 09:00 until now.
In two days I had worked 28 hours.
The key reason Quarter Past exists is that, as a business owner and founder, one of the biggest issues I found was that I was working permanently. When I decided to build this and started to track, the first thing I saw was that in two days I had worked 28 hours — 14 hours each day.
Before, I would have considered that normal. I wouldn't even have realised. But once I started to track it, the key change for me was to stop working so hard and so long, and to start working smart. This is what I want for everybody who uses it: to be able to track their time, build true focused hours, know where it's going, and be able to analyse their use of time.
That's why Quarter Past exists — so that we can be masters of our own time.
Lawrence SeaforthFounder · SeeForth Services Ltd, London
How a billable day actually goes.
A quarter of an hour, start to finish. Scroll down and it plays — the clock, the prompt and the record all move as you go.
Scroll to play
Nine o'clock. You start something.
No timer to press. Nothing to set up.
Fifteen minutes go by.
This is the part a timer loses.
It asks.
In the menu bar, out of the way. One key dismisses it.
One tap fills in the quarter you just spent.
Answering at 09:15 records 09:00 to 09:15. Backwards, not forwards.
The rest of the day goes the same way.
Four taps an hour, and the gaps stay gaps — lunch is not quietly filled in for you.
By five, you have the day.
No timer was ever started, and nothing was reconstructed from memory.
09:00
Every fifteen minutes sounds like a lot. It appears in the menu bar rather than taking focus, one key dismisses it, and it stays silent outside the hours you choose.
A person answers, usually the same day · Fourteen days, full, no reason needed
This is the whole app.
No dashboard to configure, no workspace to set up. One window that fills itself in as the day goes on.
What you meant to do, against what you did
Both halves in one place, with the difference worked out. Nothing is scored, and a line nothing measures says so rather than showing a zero.
Six looks, one app
The same data and the same buttons in whichever register suits you. This is the same afternoon as the screen above it, wearing something else.
Everything in the window, labelled.
Projects hold tasks. Tapping a task, or answering the quarter-hour check, makes an entry. The entries are the record.
- Today — the day so far, added up from the entries
- Add time — a stretch away from the Mac, marked as recalled
- Tracking — the task you tapped, and the clock since
- Note — the detail, so names stay short
- Accounted for — how much of your day the entries cover
- Projects — the broad things your time goes on
- Tasks — what you actually do; press play to start
The plan — what you meant to do, beside what you did. The difference is shown; nothing is scored.
You were away — if the Mac goes quiet while a timer is running, it asks what that time was, rather than counting it as work.
You quoted three days. This says what it took.
What you planned, beside what happened. It does not score you.
Write down what you mean to do; the app keeps the other half itself and puts the two side by side. What to make of the difference is yours.
It says so rather than showing a zero somebody would read as a failure.
Nothing about your clients leaves your Mac.
It asks. It never watches. The usual cure for forgetting is surveillance — the app reads your screen, your documents and the sites you visit. This one has no idea what is on your screen. Everything it knows, you told it in one tap.
Works entirely offline
No account, no sync, no server. Pull the network cable and nothing changes.
Your data is a file you own
Readable, exportable and yours to back up, whatever happens to the app or the licence.
Anything can be corrected
Change a start time, add a session, split a block, undo a delete. An honest record is one you're allowed to fix.
A person answers, usually the same day · Fourteen days, full, no reason needed
£54, once.
One unbilled hour costs more than the app. Built for the invoice, not instead of it: the record exports, broken down by project.
£54
one payment · one Mac · yours to keep
- 14 days free, no card
- Move it between Macs whenever you like
- Free updates, any Mac from macOS 10.15
- An expired licence never locks you out of your own data
A person answers, usually the same day · Fourteen days, full, no reason needed
Download it. Give it a fortnight.
Free for fourteen days, with no card and no account. If it earns its place, it's £54 once, paid from inside the app. Apple has checked it for malware.
A person answers, usually the same day · Fourteen days, full, no reason needed
Questions worth asking
Can I get my time out for invoicing?
Yes — the record exports, and the week can be broken down by project. It isn't an invoicing suite, and isn't trying to be.
Does it really never read my screen?
Never. It has no screen-recording or accessibility permissions, and it cannot see your apps, documents or browsing. The only thing it knows is what you tapped.
Won't a prompt every fifteen minutes drive me mad?
It appears in the menu bar rather than taking focus, one key dismisses it, and it stays silent outside the hours and days you choose. You can set the interval to 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes instead.
What if I miss one?
It asks again, still holding the whole interval. Nothing is lost by not being at the desk, and you can fill a gap in afterwards.
Where does my data live?
In a file on your Mac that you can read, export and back up. There is no account and no server, and an expired licence never blocks you from reading, editing or exporting what you already have.