timers is a simple and effective time tracking tool with a easy-to-use
command line interface. With timers you can:
- Log time on tasks,
- Get a report on how much you worked each day of the week,
- Show a timeline with your tasks today,
timers is written in rust and uses simple text files to save the tasks, which make it
extremely fast and lightweight.
On linux, just download the precompiled binary:
EXEC='/usr/local/bin/timers' && sudo wget https://github.com/frapa/timers/releases/latest/download/timers-linux -O $EXEC && sudo chmod +x $EXECTo update, simply run the command again, it will overwrite the old version. To remove, type
EXEC='/usr/local/bin/timers' && sudo rm $EXECDownload and run installer from here. To update, just install the new version. Remove like any other Windows program.
Note: Colored output is supported only by PowerShell and not by CMD. If you want to use the watch feature you need to use a compliant terminal such as git bash.
To start logging time on a task, you use the log (or start) sub-command, like this:
$ timers log "Writing timers readme"
@1: Writing timers readme
status: logging
time: 0sThe @1 is the task id, that you can use to reference the task later.
If you were already logging a task, timers will ask if you want to stop the current task and start the logging
on the new one.
You can check the current logging status with timers status, which will print a message with the currently
logged task and the amount of time you have logged on it:
$ timers status
@15: Another task
status: logging
time: 1d 2h 42m
# We can pass --timeline to show a nice timeline of todays tasks
$ timers status --timeline
█████████████████████▒▒▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
First task Third task
@15: Third task
status: logging
time: 1h 47mAnother cool option is --watch that keeps the status displayed in the console and updates it periodically
(this option is supported for git bash in Windows).
You can stop logging on a task with timers stop:
$ timers stop
@1: Writing timers readme
status: stopped
time: 19m 41sYou can then resume logging on a previous task by id, as follows:
$ timers log @1
@1: Writing timers readme
status: logging
time: 19m 41sIf you want to see the list of all your tasks, you can run timers tasks
$ timers tasks
ID TASK DURATION
----------------------------------------------------------
@1 My first task 2h 44m 12s
@2 Another task 3h 5m 47sYou can get a the total time logged with the report command.
It works like this:
$ timers report days # Or even simply `timers report`
DAY TIME LOGGED TASKS
----------------------------------
Monday 8h 26m 3
Tuesday 7h 49m 4
Wednesday 8h 4m 6
Thursday 0s 0
Friday 0s 0
Saturday 0s 0
Sunday 0s 0
----------------------------------
Total 24h 19m 13You can start logging at a certain time with the --at option:
$ timers log "Your task" --at 10:34
# You can also set the time to yesterday, by prepending y
$ timers log "Your task" --at y10:34 # yesterday at 10:34
# Or you can use relative time with + and -
$ timers log "Your task" --at -10 # 10 minutes ago
# For custom things, you can specify the full local date with time
$ timers log "Your task" --at "2019-11-10 11:10"The nice thing is that if you're already logging, it will end the current task at the specified past time point, so no overlapping tasks will be logged!
timers can export data into CSV format. You can either export logs
(which are the entries of when you started and stopped working on a task.
each task can have multiple logs), with the detailed start and end times,
or tasks, with aggregated duration.
To export use the export command, followed by the name of the thing you want
to export, as in
$ timers export logs
Task ID,Task name,Begin (UTC),End (UTC),Duration (hours)
1,My first task,2020-02-24T21:30:57.613882582+00:00,2020-02-26T20:36:44.803991524+00:00,47.09638888888889
1,My first task,2020-02-26T20:36:44.805320312+00:00,2020-02-26T20:43:54.642466170+00:00,0.11916666666666667
2,Another task,2020-02-26T20:43:54.643808060+00:00,2020-02-26T20:50:39.862161146+00:00,0.1125
...
$ timers export tasks
Task ID,Task name,Begin (UTC),End (UTC),Duration (hours)
Task ID,Task name,Logs,Duration (hours)
1,My first task,1,0.0022222222222222222
2,Another task,1,17.691944444444445
...You can also save the data to a file and only export data between certain dates:
# Save to logs.csv
$ timers export logs -o logs.csv
# Export only the February 2020 logs (to date is not included)
$ timer export logs --from 2020-02-01 --to 2020-03-01There are also other options, please consult the command line help for details.
Why should I choose timers instead of any other time tracking tool?
3 reasons:
- You like simple things like plain text files. Who ever want a database instead of those?
- Let your colleagues think you're a genius who's always mysteriously typing into a black box (the terminal).
- You believe global warming is a threat or you're laptop has a really shitty battery.
- Colored terminal output. This alone would be enough do discard any competing tool.
A command line tool? Come on, we're in the 2020s!
Command line can be very simple and let me focus my energy on more important features. Plus it's much more efficient (battery, memory, CPU) than any GUI tool, or even worse web-based solution.
You're free to use your web-based tool that will eat 100 MB of your memory, download 10 Mb of crap (including the very necessary 8 Mb of javascript code) just so you can click the "log" button on a task.
Where is my data stored? Are you stealing it?
No way, it's all in the timers_time_logs folder inside your user app data folder (typically
/home/<yourusername>/.local/share/timers_time_logs on unix systems and C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Roaming\timers_time_logs
on Windows).
timers has a bug, what do I do?
File a issue on the tab above. If the gods of the internet are favourable, I might look into fixing it. Please provide a decent bug report.