Tokify vs Timing

What Timing is good at

Timing is a well-regarded macOS app whose signature feature is automatic tracking: it watches which apps and documents you use and builds a detailed timeline of your day without you having to press Start or remember to log anything. It also has powerful review and reporting tools, project rules, and integrations. If you want a comprehensive, hands-off record of how your Mac time is spent, Timing is purpose-built for exactly that and does it very well.

Where Tokify is different

Tokify is deliberately intentional rather than automatic. You tell it what you’re working on and press Start, so the record reflects the work as you think about it — not a raw log of every window you touched. For a lot of people, that intentional framing is the point: it doubles as a gentle nudge to stay on task.

Tokify is also free and open source under GPL-3.0, where Timing is a paid, proprietary app. And your history is a plain-text log at ~/.tock.txt rather than an app-owned database. You can read it, grep it, edit it, or keep it in a git repo. Both apps run locally on your Mac and work offline, but Tokify keeps your data in a format you fully own.

Which should you pick?

If you want automatic, passive tracking of everything on your Mac and don’t mind paying for it, Timing is a strong fit. If you prefer to consciously log what you’re doing, want a free and open-source tool, and want your time data to stay a plain-text file you control, Tokify is the calmer, more open option.

Free · Open source (GPL-3.0) · macOS 11+ · No account required