Turn the work you do into billable work. Automatically.
is automatic time tracking and invoicing for freelance developers on Mac. It quietly captures the work you do, connects it to your projects, and turns it into billable time and invoices — without asking you to start and stop a timer.
Quiet. Local. Honest about your week.
Three steps, always in the same order. You work normally; tracewise captures it, organises it by project, and turns it into billable time. No timer to start, no screenshots, no monitoring.
The folders you pick — and only those.
Drop ~/code/client-app and ~/clients/mira-studio into tracewise once. The menu-bar agent watches those paths so you can keep working normally — no timer to start, nothing to remember at the end of the day. The rest of your machine is invisible to it.
Not what you type. How your time actually breaks down.
tracewise looks at activity in the folders you choose — when you're working, when you switch projects, when you step away. It never reads your files. That activity, all processed on your Mac, becomes a simple focus score, sorted into deep work, regular work, and away time.
Friday morning, your invoice is already written.
Your tracked work, organised by project and turned into billable hours, with notes pulled from each session. Review it, adjust what you need, export the PDF. The work already happened — this is it, ready to bill.
Start free. Upgrade when it pays for itself.
The free plan lets you experience automatic tracking. Solo gives you the full workflow for turning that tracked work into billable time and invoices.
For trying automatic tracking.
For freelancers who bill clients every week.
The questions we get every week.
Longer answers live in the documentation and the Privacy Promise.
Missing one? hello@tracewise.app.
No. The agent reads filesystem activity — names, timestamps, idle gaps, project switches. It understands that work happened, never what the work says: it does not open or transmit file contents. Run it offline if you want; the dashboard syncs only when you sign in.
A small on-device model weighs three signals: the rhythm of save/build events, gaps between context switches, and how long you stay in a single folder. It is a tendency, not a verdict — you can disable scoring entirely and still get hours-by-project.
A clean one-page PDF with your branding, billable hours grouped by project, and optional session notes — built from work you already did rather than hours you typed in. You review and sign before anything is sent; tracewise never emails clients on your behalf.
Not today. The menu-bar agent is macOS-only. A Linux daemon is on the roadmap, but no Windows plans.
Cancelling just stops the billing — nothing is deleted. Your account stays, your data stays, and you move to the Free plan. Cloud data is only removed if you delete your account, which clears it within 30 days. Local data always stays on your Mac. Want an export first? Settings → Your data → Export data gives you everything as JSON.
Freelance developers on a Mac who bill clients for their time. That is the focus for now — tracewise is built around how development work actually happens, so the folders you watch, the sessions it detects, and the way hours reach an invoice are all shaped for that. Other kinds of freelance work may come later.
No. tracewise is a personal work log, not surveillance software. It never records screenshots, keystrokes, clipboard contents, or file contents, and it only watches folders you explicitly choose.