The desktop app
Track from your Mac's menu bar — start, stop, and manage time, even offline, without opening a browser tab.
The desktop app puts ProjectPacer in your menu bar: your running timer ticks up there, and a click opens a compact window to start, stop, and edit time — no browser tab required. It signs in with your normal account and talks to the same workspace, and it keeps working when you're offline.
Install it
Get it from Settings → Apps in the web app ("ProjectPacer for Mac"). The page shows the current version.
Open the downloaded .dmg and drag ProjectPacer to your Applications folder.
Launch it. It lives in the menu bar (there's no dock icon by default).
While the app is in beta it isn't notarized, so macOS may block the first launch. Clear the quarantine flag once with: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ProjectPacer.app — then open it normally. The in-app install guide shows this step too.
Sign in
On first run, paste your workspace URL and click Sign in — it opens the real login page in its own window. Your password is never stored by the app; the session cookie is kept so you stay signed in across restarts. Signing out clears it.
The menu bar
Once a timer is running, the menu bar shows the live elapsed time, ticking every second — optionally prefixed with the project name. Left- or right-click the icon to open the popover. In Settings you can switch the display to H:MM:SS (show seconds) and toggle the project-name prefix.
The popover window
Clicking the menu-bar icon opens a compact window with three views:
Start a new entry (description, then company → project, and optionally a task and task type), Start / Stop, and edit the running entry inline. Below it, today's entries with a running total — click any to edit its description, project, times, or delete it.
Full companies & projects management — add, edit, and delete clients and projects (name, color, logo) — mirroring the web app.
Show-seconds and show-project toggles, the global hotkey, launch-at-login, sign in/out, Open full app, Open in browser, and Quit.
Works offline
Lost your connection? Keep working — offline tracking is built in. Starting, stopping, pausing, and editing today's time all keep working with no internet, and your running timer keeps ticking in the menu bar (with a small ◦ to show you're offline). Your time is saved on your Mac and syncs on its own the moment you're back online — nothing for you to do. While you're offline the popover shows a quiet reminder, and anything still waiting to upload carries a small amber dot that clears once it syncs. You can even quit and reopen in between — queued time waits on your Mac for the next sync.
While offline, start and stop times are stamped from your computer's clock (the same moments you'd record online). If that clock is badly wrong, set it right before a long stretch away from a connection.
Offline covers your own time entries. Creating or editing companies and projects, and anything behind Pop Out Window (reports, exports), need a connection — they're available again the moment you're back online.
Start or stop from anywhere — the global hotkey
A keyboard shortcut (default ⌘⇧Space, changeable in Settings) starts or stops your timer from any app, without opening the popover. Handy for catching a context switch the moment it happens.
Launch at login
Turn on Launch at login and the app starts quietly in your menu bar when you sign in to your Mac — so the timer's always a click away. It's on by default for new installs.
Open the full app
Need reports, exports, or anything the popover doesn't have? Open full app launches the complete web app in its own desktop window, using the same signed-in session. Open in browser does the same in your default browser.
Updates
When a newer version is available, the popover shows an Update available banner — click to download the latest build, or dismiss it. It re-checks periodically.
Presence as a source (optional)
The app can also feed presence into AI suggestions — reporting only when your computer starts, wakes, idles, locks, or sleeps (timestamps, never what you're doing).
The first time you sign in, the app asks whether to turn this on, with a plain explanation of what it does and doesn't see. Choose Turn on and it starts working; choose Not now and nothing is recorded. Either way you can change it later — right in the app's opt-in or under Settings → AI suggestions.
Presence powers the Overrun and Missed time checks. It records only that your computer was active at a moment — never your screen, your files, the apps you use, or what you type. It's yours alone, and off in one click whenever you like. Presence never logs time by itself: it only helps draft suggestions you approve.
Desktop notifications
With the app installed and signed in, ProjectPacer can send its nudges as native desktop notifications — the start-a-timer nudge, the running-timer nudge, things to review, and the daily digest. Pick which ones (and whether they also go to Slack or your browser) under Settings → Notifications; clicking a notification opens the relevant page. They respect your quiet hours, and each arrives at most once. All off until you turn them on. See Notifications for how the channels and per-type toggles fit together.
If you don't want the desktop app, the Browser channel delivers the same nudges through your web browser even when the ProjectPacer tab is closed — no download, enabled per device. See Notifications.
How presence turns into time you can review.