Are You Productive
Download
The private, lightweight macOS focus tracker that runs invisibly in the background — and blocks distractions before they block your goals. Your habits stay on your Mac. We never see them.
A real RescueTime alternative for Mac
Most time trackers are bloated, cloud-based, and watching everything you do. This one weighs ~20 MB, never uploads a byte, and runs so quietly you'll forget it's there until the chart shows up.
~20 MB on disk, under 1% CPU when idle. Built on Tauri + Rust — no Chromium, no telemetry agent, no fans spinning up. RescueTime weighs hundreds of MB and phones home constantly. This one just sits there and works.
Every app and active browser tab is auto-mapped into one of 20 productive-vs-unproductive categories. No manual labels, no weekly cleanup — just an honest breakdown of where your hours actually went.
Privacy first
No account. No cloud. No sync. No screen recording. No keystroke logging. The database lives in your home folder — encrypted by FileVault, owned by you, deletable in one click. Most "productivity" apps quietly upload your life. This one literally cannot.
We listen for the moment your focused window changes — that's it. Nothing happens between those moments.
TL;DR — we know you switched to Slack at 2:14 PM. We have no idea what you said in there.
Private windows in Safari, Chrome, Arc, Firefox and friends are detected and ignored by default. What's private stays private.
Got a banking app, a journaling tool, or a dating site you'd rather not see in your weekly chart? Add it to the excludelist and it disappears from history.
Your data lives quietly on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded. Nothing is shared. Delete it any time and the app forgets — instantly, completely, with no "are you sure" form on a server somewhere.
Your productive
Productivity isn't one-size-fits-all. A designer's hours in Figma are deep work; a manager's hours in Figma probably aren't. Pick the apps and websites that count as productive for you — and the ones that quietly don't — and the rest of the app does the math honestly. No preset categories. No labels you didn't choose.
Tag the apps and sites you actually do real work in — code editors, design tools, research, writing, comms. Whatever your work looks like.
Mark distractions on your own terms. No "social media = bad" preset. If TikTok is your job, TikTok is productive — your call.
Roles shift. Productive shifts. Update labels in seconds and the whole timeline reclassifies — past, present, and tomorrow.
Flip Private Mode on with a single click in the title bar. The tracker pauses, the database stops writing, and a soft red aurora fades across the screen so you remember it's on. Take a break, take a meeting, take the rest of the night — none of it gets recorded.
Most trackers just tell you you wasted four hours on TikTok. Focus Mode actually stops it. The apps and sites you've marked as distractions get shut down the moment you open them, with a soft green overlay nudging you back to the task. Perfect for exam week, deep work blocks, or the 2 PM "just one video" trap.
Day at a glance
Open the app and your whole day reads like one honest sentence. Productive hours, distractions, focus streaks, and the apps that owned your attention — laid out in a single screen, no spreadsheet required. Find out what's actually stealing your time, while you can still do something about it.
Know whether you're winning the day before lunch — not after midnight.
Top apps and sites bubble to the surface, so you stop guessing where the hours went.
Spot the runs of deep work you'd otherwise forget — and protect them tomorrow.
Honest insights
When the day ends and the score isn't where you wanted it, Insights shows you exactly what stole the hours. Sankey flows, hourly rhythm, and a clean productive-vs-unproductive breakdown turn the fuzzy feeling of "I got nothing done" into something you can act on tomorrow morning.
See exactly which hours you actually focus — and which ones drain you.
Watch how your time flows from category to category across the day.
Know if it's chat, social, or hidden meetings stealing your deep work.
Trends
One day is noise. A month is a story. Trends show how your productivity score, focus hours, and category mix shift over weeks and months — so you can tell whether the changes you're making are actually working.
Built for
If you've ever closed your laptop at midnight wondering where the day went — this was made for you.
Block TikTok, YouTube and Reddit for the week of finals. See how many hours actually went to studying versus the rabbit hole. Your data stays on your laptop — not on a study-tracking platform's server.
Bill by the hour? Get an honest record of where every hour went — private to you, never visible to a manager or platform. Perfect for invoicing yourself with a straight face.
You don't need another dashboard guilt-tripping you. You need the apps to stop opening. Focus Mode does that — actively, not passively.
Cal Newport readers, Zettelkasten people, builders chasing flow — get the hourly rhythm chart that shows when your real focus windows happen, without giving a SaaS your behavioral data.
FAQ
Are You Productive is a free, private, lightweight macOS app that tracks how you actually spend time on your Mac and blocks distracting apps and websites in Focus Mode. All data stays on your device — no account, no cloud sync, no telemetry. About 20 MB, under 1% CPU when idle.
Yes. Your habits never leave your Mac. There is no account, no cloud sync, no telemetry. The only thing the app reads is the title of the front-most window — never your keystrokes, screen content, or clipboard.
Are You Productive is local-first and lightweight — about 20 MB and under 1% CPU. RescueTime and similar tools upload your activity to their servers and run heavier background services. Built on Tauri + Rust, this one runs natively on Apple Silicon and never sends your data anywhere.
Yes. Focus Mode actively closes distracting apps and overlays a green nudge on blocked websites the moment you open them — TikTok, YouTube, X, Reddit, Netflix and Discord are blocked by default, and you can add your own bundle ids and domains.
Yes. Free to download, no account required, no trial expiry. A native Windows 11 version is on the way.
macOS 12 Monterey and later. Universal binary — runs natively on both Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) and Intel Macs.
Yes — that's exactly what Are You Productive is. It's a free, local-first RescueTime alternative for macOS that tracks app and website usage without uploading anything to a server, and it adds an active Focus Mode that closes distracting apps — something RescueTime does not do on its free tier.
Yes, fully. There is no login, no cloud sync, and no network calls required for tracking, Focus Mode, or insights. The only time the app touches the network is when you manually check for an update.
It shows an honest hour-by-hour breakdown of where your day actually went — the feedback loop most people with ADHD time blindness are missing. Seeing the four hours that vanished into Messenger or YouTube, instead of guessing, is often enough to break the loop. No medication, no gamification, no shame.
No. The app only reads the title of the front-most window to know which app or website you're using. It does not record keystrokes, take screenshots, capture clipboard contents, or read incognito and private browsing windows.
No 10-hacks listicles. No shame. Just the things I wish I'd read before I built this app.
The reason isn't discipline. It's that your environment is engineered against you — and there's a 30-minute fix.
Read post ADHDIf your hours vanish into Spotify, YouTube, and Messenger, you're not lazy — you're time-blind. Here's the calm, private fix that finally helped.
Read post Website blockersAn honest 2026 comparison — what works, what's overkill, and the two-tool stack most people actually need.
Read postThe same lightweight tracker, the same privacy promise, rebuilt natively for Windows 11. Want to know when it lands? Drop us a line.
Notify me on launchFree. Native. Private. ~20 MB. Install once, forget it's there — and wake up tomorrow with the first honest picture of where your day actually went.
Got a feature request, a rough edge that bugs you, or a great idea you'd love to see in the app? Hop into our Discord — we read everything, and the best ideas ship.
Join us on DiscordDrop your email and we'll send you a heads-up on new releases and the Windows launch. No newsletter spam, you can unsubscribe any time.
Your email is stored securely and never shared with third parties.