Paul Christiano and Katja Grace jointly explored several different time-tracking apps and concluded that, while Toggl has flaws, it has fewer flaws than the alternatives. Independently, I did some research myself a while ago and also came to the conclusion that Toggl was superior to its rivals, though I can no longer recall the considerations that led me to reach this conclusion.
I prefer Toggl because it is fastest: a single keypress to stop the current timer or return to the last one, and a single key press followed by typing a uniquely-identifying substring to start a new timer. Katja and/or me also tried yast, freckle, clok, harvest, lumina, and a few other options I’ve forgotten about. All of these have more clicks/keystrokes per operation.
Toggl also works offline, which ruled out several alternatives, and has a reasonable (though not excellent) interface for viewing reports, and 3 levels of reporting (name of entry, job, and client).
Note that Toggl crashes constantly (perhaps 2-4 times a day for me on OSX), but it can be restarted in a few seconds each time, and so this isn’t a huge consideration for me.
Note that Toggl crashes constantly (perhaps 2-4 times a day for me on OSX), but it can be restarted in a few seconds each time, and so this isn’t a huge consideration for me.
Huh. Is that the desktop app? I’ve never used that app, but have had 0 problems with Toggl in any of it’s other manifestations (website, mobile, command line tools).
Paul Christiano and Katja Grace jointly explored several different time-tracking apps and concluded that, while Toggl has flaws, it has fewer flaws than the alternatives. Independently, I did some research myself a while ago and also came to the conclusion that Toggl was superior to its rivals, though I can no longer recall the considerations that led me to reach this conclusion.
It would be cool if Paul and Katja published their results.
Also, I remembered the reason why I use Toggl is because you recommended it to me.
Though, like with Paul and Katja’s recommendation of Workflowy, I was skeptical at first.
I prefer Toggl because it is fastest: a single keypress to stop the current timer or return to the last one, and a single key press followed by typing a uniquely-identifying substring to start a new timer. Katja and/or me also tried yast, freckle, clok, harvest, lumina, and a few other options I’ve forgotten about. All of these have more clicks/keystrokes per operation.
Toggl also works offline, which ruled out several alternatives, and has a reasonable (though not excellent) interface for viewing reports, and 3 levels of reporting (name of entry, job, and client).
Note that Toggl crashes constantly (perhaps 2-4 times a day for me on OSX), but it can be restarted in a few seconds each time, and so this isn’t a huge consideration for me.
Huh. Is that the desktop app? I’ve never used that app, but have had 0 problems with Toggl in any of it’s other manifestations (website, mobile, command line tools).