User Guide

Deski is a local-first desktop time tracker. It quietly notices when you're active at your computer and turns that into time blocks, charts and tags — and your activity data stays on your device.

Privacy & your data

Deski is built so that tracking never becomes surveillance:

• Keyboard = a count only. Deski records that a key was pressed and when, as a running tally. It never records which keys you press.
• Mouse = activity only, no location. Clicks and movement are logged as events in time — never the pointer's position on screen.
• Everything is stored locally in a single SQLite database file on your computer. Your activity is never uploaded anywhere.
• Clearing really clears. Cleared data is securely wiped and the database compacted, so it's genuinely gone from disk.

Mouse tracking is on by default; keyboard tracking is off by default. Both are toggles in Settings.

The window

• Move it by dragging the top bar; minimize / maximize / close from the top-right corner.
• The window auto-fits your screen height, including high-DPI and multi-monitor setups.
• A left sidebar switches between Stopwatch (Timer), Insights, and Settings (the gear). It can auto-hide.
• The footer shows "Local only" — a reminder of where your data lives — and your subscription status on the right.

Timer page

Auto vs Manual mode

• Auto — Deski watches in the background; a time block opens by itself when it sees activity. The block runs until it holds a full block length of tracked time (10 minutes by default), then completes and rolls into the next. Going idle for longer than the idle gap stops counting time and closes the block early.
• Manual — a plain stopwatch: Start opens a block, Stop saves it.

Out of the box the timer has no buttons at all — Auto is how Deski is meant to be used. The start/stop button, the Auto/Manual switch and the pause button are each opt-in under Settings → Tracking → Timing.

You can't switch modes while tracking — stop first. The big circle shows elapsed time and a status pill (Idle, Tracking, Paused or In Progress), with a progress bar underneath showing how far the open block has got towards its full block length.

Pausing

With the Pause button switched on, pausing stops the clock while keeping your session and its block open — the break is left out of the block's duration. Works in both Auto and Manual.

Today's Sessions

• Rename a block — click its title and type.
• Tag it — up to 3 color-coded tags per block.
• Delete it — the trash icon.
• Each card shows the block's clicks · moves · keys counts.

Total Today sums today's tracked time. Clear all on this page clears today's blocks (with confirmation).

Insights page

Daily Activity chart

Pick a chart type (Heatmap or Bar) and granularity (by hour / day / month) — including a GitHub-style contribution calendar and a weekday×hour punch card.

Efficiency Score

A ring showing Focus ÷ Span for today: focus is your total tracked time, span runs from your first to your last activity. It measures continuity, not the quality of your work — treat it as "how steadily was I active today."

Recent Activity

Drill down through your history: day → hour → individual blocks, with breadcrumbs. Inside a day, a By hour / All blocks toggle chooses between the hours to drill into and every block in the day listed flat. On any list of blocks you can rename, tag or delete a block, and tick two or more to merge them — use "All blocks" when they fall in different hours. Clear all here removes everything, behind a confirmation.

Settings

Settings opens on a list of six sections; tap one to open it, and the arrow at the top left takes you back to the list. Reopening Settings returns you to the section you were last in.

• Tracking
  • Track — mouse (default on) and keyboard-count (default off) toggles.
  • Timing — the idle gap (10 seconds to 5 minutes) sets how long a lull has to last before it stops counting as tracked time; full block length (1 to 60 minutes, 10 by default) sets how much tracked time a block holds before the next one starts. Also here: the opt-in pause, start/stop and Auto/Manual timer controls.
• Tags — create, colour and delete tags, and pin colours you reuse. See Tags.
• Startup
  • Startup & tray — launch Deski with Windows, and minimise to the tray instead of the taskbar.
  • Scheduling — see Scheduling below.
• Appearance
  • Appearance — 8 light/dark themes.
  • Sidebar — auto-hide the icon rail.
  • Week — choose your start of week for the weekday charts.
  • Date format — presets or a custom pattern with live preview:

• Data — back up and restore your database, and print a timesheet report (see below).
• Account — sign in with the email you used at checkout to activate your trial or subscription; your status shows in the bottom-right of the app. Also holds About (version, check for updates) and Tutorial (replay the walkthrough).

Scheduling

Under Settings → Startup. Everything here is off by default — Deski never starts tracking on its own unless you ask it to.

• Start tracking on startup — begins tracking as soon as Deski opens.
• Scheduled hours — a From and To time; tracking starts when the window opens and stops when it closes.
• Days — the circles pick which days both settings above apply to. They follow your start-of-week setting.

On a day you haven't selected, Deski doesn't track on its own — even in Auto mode, which otherwise runs whenever the app is open. To track on one of those days, start it by hand: turn on the start/stop button under Tracking → Timing, or use Manual mode. A session you start yourself is never stopped by the schedule. A schedule that runs overnight belongs to the day it starts on — a Friday 22:00–02:00 window runs into Saturday morning.

The schedule only acts when a window opens or closes, so stopping the timer by hand inside a scheduled window keeps it stopped; it won't be restarted until the next window begins.

Data: backup, restore & reports

Everything Deski records stays on your machine, so Settings → Data is how it gets out of the app — for safekeeping, for moving to another computer, or for a client.

Back up your database

Back up asks where to save, then writes your entire history to a single file. It's an ordinary SQLite database, not a Deski-only format, so you can open it in any SQLite tool — DB Browser for SQLite, TablePlus, the sqlite3 command line — and read your blocks and tags directly.

⚠️ The backup isn't encrypted. Anyone who can open the file can read your tracked time, so treat it as carefully as the app's own data. (A tool that offers to decrypt it, as TablePlus does, will ask for a password — there isn't one. Set the connection's encryption to None.)

Restore from a backup

Restore asks for a backup file and, after a confirmation, replaces everything currently in Deski with its contents. Deski checks the file is a genuine Deski backup first and refuses anything else, so picking the wrong file leaves your data untouched — but a successful restore can't be undone. Take a backup first if the current data still matters.

Timesheet report

Create report opens a printable timesheet for a date range: total hours, a breakdown by tag and by day, and every block listed. Add a Prepared for name for a client or project, and tick Include signature lines for sign-off. Print opens your system print dialog — choose Microsoft Print to PDF (Windows) or Save as PDF (macOS) to get a file instead of paper.

A block carrying several tags counts in full under each of them, so a tag's hours always reconcile against that tag's own work. That means the tag rows can add up to more than the total — bill from the total.

Tags

• Create tags in Settings → Tags: a name (emojis welcome, e.g. 📚 Study) plus a color.
• Or create one straight from a block: hit + Tag on its card, type a name and pick Create. The new tag is added to your library and applied to that block, so tagging never needs a trip to Settings. It gets a colour from the palette automatically — change it in Settings if you want a specific one.
• Apply up to 3 tags per block from its card.
• You can keep up to 100 tags, with names up to 30 characters. Once you have more than a handful, both the block picker and the Settings list gain a search box.
• Pin colours you reuse — Settings → Tags has 10 slots. Press + on an empty slot to save the colour you're currently editing, click a filled slot to apply it, and use the × to clear one. Clearing a slot leaves the others where they are.
• Deleting a tag from your library removes it from any blocks using it.

Clearing your data

• Delete a single block — the trash icon on its card.
• Clear all (Timer page) — today's blocks.
• Clear all (Insights page) — all history.

⚠️ Deletions cannot be undone. Deski keeps your data local with no cloud backup, so cleared data can't be recovered — it's securely wiped from disk. If you might want it later, take a backup first; restoring one is the only way to get cleared data back.

FAQ

Where is my data stored?
In a single SQLite database in Deski's application-data folder on your computer. Your activity never leaves your device.

Does Deski record what I type?
No. Keyboard tracking is a count of key presses only — the actual keys are never captured.

Does Deski know where my mouse is?
No. It records that clicks and movements happened and when, never the on-screen position.

Why didn't a block appear in Auto mode?
A block opens only once activity is detected. If you were idle, no block is created. Check that mouse and/or keyboard tracking is enabled in Settings.

How does the subscription work?
New users get a 14-day free trial of the full app — $0 charged during the trial. After that, Deski Pro is $5/month — see Pricing. Only your subscription status is checked online; your tracking data always stays local.