All The Ways To Auto-Track Your Time

Time tracking. You either love it or — more likely — you don’t. After all, who needs another chore? But here’s the thing: it’s not that time tracking itself is hard; it’s the way we’ve been doing it. It’s manual and often requires more attention than the tasks we’re trying to track.

So, what if tracking just… happened? No clicks, no reminders, no extra burden. Because productivity tools shouldn’t get in the way of productivity.

That’s why we’re betting on auto-tracking. It’s not about adding; it’s about subtracting friction, freeing you to focus.

Ready? Let’s see how you can do that with Toggl Track. Watch the video below 👇

...or read on to learn more about our automated time tracking features.

Calendar integrations have reportedly helped teams save up to 80 hours per month spent on time tracking.

Integrate with your calendars, enable auto-track for events, and they’ll automatically convert into time entries. Any change on your calendar will automatically sync with Toggl Track.

We live in our browsers. Most of that time? It’s work. But tracking it has been this clunky ritual: click, start, stop. Rinse and repeat. That’s outdated.

Here’s what you can do: use the Toggl Track Chrome extension and enable “Always Track This Page.” If you’re on a specific webpage — whether it’s your project management tool or an online meeting — the time is automatically tracked.

You control how long you need to be there before the clock starts ticking. Close the tab, and the tracker stops.

The Timeline feature on Desktop apps is the answer to that inevitable question, “What was I doing at 10 a.m.?” When enabled, it automatically records what apps you used, what sites you visited for more than 10 seconds, so at the end of the day, you have a real picture of how it unfolded.

Only you decide which activity turns into time entries. Until then, your data remains private to you.

How to Enable the Timeline Feature

• Windows Desktop App: On the main Timer screen, go to the "Calendar" tab, click on the three dots, and enable "Record activity."
• macOS Desktop App: Open Preferences (⌘ ,) → Calendar, and select your tracking level under "Activity recording." Update your System Preferences to allow tracking of window titles, and enable "sync local activity" if you want this data available across other Toggl Track apps.

Viewing Timeline data in the web app

In the web app, Timeline data appears in two areas:

Under Extra Visualizations, select "Activity Timeline" to see your last seven days of Timeline activity in 15-minute increments. This view lets you hover over each interval for a detailed breakdown.

Timeline entries appear as "pills" on the Calendar Day view. Color-coded pills provide insights into your day:

• Green: Timeline activity matches a logged time entry.
• Red: Timeline activity with no corresponding time entry.
• Orange: Time entry exists without timeline activity, indicating potential discrepancies.

By clicking on any pill, you’ll see detailed information about each activity, including total duration, active time, and an expandable list of apps used. Now you can convert any activity pill directly into a time entry.

You can now drag your cursor over any open window, and — voila! — you’ve created an auto-tracking rule. You’ll be prompted to set details like description, project, and tags.

A time entry will automatically start when you open that window, and you can choose how much time should be spent there before tracking begins.

Let’s agree: time tracking isn’t the goal; it’s a tool. The goal is to reduce friction and give you back control over how you spend your day and what you focus on.

We’re continually improving automated time tracking — stay tuned for more updates.