FAQ
Who can benefit from Daily?
Daily is meant for a broad target group: from graphic designers to consultants and software developers to lawyers. If you can answer YES to all questions below, you can absolutely benefit from Daily:
1. Are you a Mac user?
2. Is it important for you (or your employer) to have insights in your daily activities?
3. Are you performing most of your work behind a computer?
4. By average, are you working on three or more different activities per day?
How does Daily work?
Daily works by asking what you're doing. This is what is called "sample-based time tracking". Together with sessions indicating when you've started working, for how long and when you've stopped working, Daily is able to calculate the time spent per activity.
How does Daily differ from other time tracking solutions?
Most time tracking solutions work either fully manually or automatically. Manual tools (such as Toggl) are great when you have the disciple to change the "active" project as soon as you start working on a different project. When you forget to do so (which always happens now and then), recovering will be hard and results will be inaccurate. On the other end, fully automatic tools (e.g. by detecting the name of an open Word document) sound great but the problem arises when you try to link these automatically created activities with your "own" labels. This still requires human work and becomes very technical.
Daily offers best of both worlds: you still provide the activities, giving you the control of the names displayed on your time sheets but the calculation is done automatically for you.
How can I go to a specific day?
Using the dashboard you can either click the previous/next buttons in the header or you can type in the specific day by clicking the date label. This field also understands relative days. For example, typing "1-9" will navigate directly to January 9 and "last monday" directly navigates to last monday.
Can I change the interval of the pop-ups?
Yes, you can. Open Daily's preferences, click the "Dialog" tab and change the "Dialog appearance" setting. Note that you cannot change the interval to a specific time. Pop-up intervals are always randomly created, resulting in greater accuracy.
What happens when I stop working on my computer for a while?
Daily may become inactive after a configurable amount of time. This threshold can be configured by changing the "ask after inactivity" value. Daily monitors your activity by tracking your mouse (or another pointer device). If you haven't moved your mouse more than the configured threshold, Daily will become inactive. When you start moving your mouse again it will ask what you've been doing.
What happens when I dismiss the inactivity dialog by clicking the "X" button?
Other than the "ignore" (X) button in the "sample" dialog, this will cause Daily to dismiss the inactivity period and creates a gap within that day. For example, you might want to click the "ignore" (X) button after lunch enabling you to skip registering the time during the inactivity period. The total time worked will be affected when clicking this button.
What is "silent mode" and how does it work?
Silent mode suppresses sample pop-ups by automatically applying a predefined activity. This is handy when, for example, going to meetings or giving a presentation. Silent mode can be enabled via the dashboard or via a key command.
What does "auto apply" mean?
The auto apply function applies the selected activity (in the drop down box when Daily asks you what you’re doing) after a specific amount of seconds. This is handy when you don’t want to apply the same activity yourself manually.
What does "enable registration mode" mean?
In the preferences you can change this setting. When enabed, Daily will automatically starts registering when Daily starts. This setting won't have effect when the scheduler is enabled and prohibits registering.
How does the scheduler work?
The scheduler is a very handy function which enables you to only register at specific times. For example, you might want to start registring at week days from 9.00AM to 5.00PM. When you start working at 8.50AM, Daily will refuse registering until it becomes 9.00AM. At 5.00PM Daily will automatically stop registering (unless the "overtime modus" is enabled, see next question). Note that the scheduler can be overridden manually by manually switching between registration modes.
What is "enable overtime modus" and how does it work?
Normally Daily stops registering when the scheduler is set to stop at a specific time. However, when the "enable overtime modus" is enabled, Daily will continue to register until you stop working on your computer for a while. When returning, Daily will behave according to the scheduler's setting. This feature is handy when working a bit longer than expected without the risk of losing registered time.
Which keyboard shortcuts are available?
You can control Daily directly using your keyboard, even when another application is active. Keyboard shortcuts can be changed via the preferences window. The following keyboard shortcuts are enabled by default:
• Open dashboard (⋀⇧D)
• Focus visible dialog (⋀⇧F)
• Apply selected activity (⋀⇧S)
• Toggle registration mode (⋀⇧R)
• Toggle silent mode (⋀⇧Z)
How can I keep the window open when switching between applications?
You have two options:
1) Simply double click the icon in the status bar to keep it open, even when you're switching between other applications, or;
2) Make sure the "Keep window visible after losing focus" preference is switched on. This will cause the window to be open constanly unless you close it again by clicking on the icon in the status bar.
How can I merge activities?
Follow the steps below to merge activities. Note that you cannot undo this.
1) Open the Activity Manager by clicking “Manage Activities…” in the configuration menu. You can access the configuration menu by hovering your mouse over the dashboard’s bottom bar and clicking the configuration icon;
2) Click the source activity you want to merge;
3) Drag the source activity on the target activity and release your mouse;
4) Daily will ask you if you want to merge the activities, click “OK” to confirm this.
Additionally, renaming an activity to a name that already exists, will also cause Daily to ask if you want to merge the activities.
How can I add, edit and delete time entries?
Version 1.6.0 introduces the ability to manually add, edit and delete time entries. Note that you can only do this when the dashboard in set to Day mode. To add a time entry, click on the plus (+) button in the dashboard. To edit a time entry, click on a time entry and enter a new duration. The duration can have the following formats:
• Use “+30m” to add 30 minutes
• Use “-1h 30m” to subtract an hour and a half
• Use “0” to remove a time entry
• Use “45” to apply 45 minutes
• Leave empty to add a new sample
Why should I send anonymous usage statistics?
We are constantly improving Daily and for that, usage statistics are very valuable. Note that these statistics are anonymous and do not contain activities or other personal information. What they do contain is basic information about your computer (e.g. model number and software version), Daily's preferences and software version.
How can I migrate data between Macs?
Daily stores all data in a folder located at ~/Library/Containers/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main. Do not copy the entire folder from your old Mac to your new Mac as it will also include may other unneeded files due the organisation of this folder caused by the way how Apple deals with sandboxed apps. Make sure that you have started Daily on your new Mac at least once. After this, quit Daily on both Macs before proceeding.
The main folder you need to migrate is ~/Library/Containers/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main/Data/Library/Daily/. This folder contains SQLite database files representing your data.
Potentially you might also want to migrate ~/Library/Containers/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main/Data/Library/Preferences/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main.plist. This file contains Daily's preferences.
Can I automate tasks using AppleScript?
Version 1.8.0 and later provides support for Apple's AppleScript mechanism. This enables you to automate these tasks:
• Getting and setting the current registration mode
• Adding, editing and removing entries
• Export data as CSV and JSON
• Add, rename, merge, enable, disable and export activities
Refer to other FAQ items for AppleScript examples. The website macosxautomation.com describes in detail how AppleScript scripts can be used.
How can I get/set the current registration mode using AppleScript?
Please refer to the following examples:
tell application "Daily"
set InOneHour to (current date) + (1 * hours)
get registration mode
set registration mode "off"
set registration mode "silent" with activity "Meeting"
set registration mode "silent" with activity "Customer presentation" that ends InOneHour
set registration mode "ask"
end tell
How can I add, edit and remove entries using AppleScript?
Please refer to the following examples:
tell application "Daily"
set Yesterday to (current date) - (1 * days)
add "Documentation"
add "Homework" with duration 10
add "Phone call" with duration 10 for Yesterday
edit "Lunch" with duration 15
edit "Coffee" with duration 15 for Yesterday
end tell
How can I export data using AppleScript?
Please refer to the following examples:
tell application "Daily"
set Yesterday to (current date) - (1 * days)
set Today to (current date)
set Location to choose folder with prompt "Please select a folder where you want to store the exported files:"
export csv with report "summary" from Yesterday to Today with delimiter "," to file POSIX path of Location & "summary.csv"
export csv with report "daily overview" from Yesterday to Today with delimiter "," to file POSIX path of Location & "daily overview.csv"
export json with report "summary" from Yesterday to Today to file POSIX path of Location & "summary.json"
export json with report "daily overview" from Yesterday to Today to file POSIX path of Location & "daily overview.json"
print json with report "summary" from Yesterday to Today
print json with report "daily overview" from Yesterday to Today
end tell
How can I manage activities using AppleScript?
Please refer to the following examples:
tell application "Daily"
add activity "Diner"
rename activity "Diner" to "Breakfast"
merge activity "Diner" into "Breakfast"
enable activity "Breakfast"
disable activity "Coffee"
delete activity "Breakfast"
export activities to file POSIX file "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/YourUsername/Desktop/activities.json"
print activities
end tell
I'm encountering an issue with Daily, what can I do?
Daily has a built-in crash reporting mechanism. This mechanism will ask you to send a report about a crash the next time you start Daily again. We strongly recommend to send these reports as it helps us identifying issues and solving them.
If Daily does not crash but you think it is behaving incorrectly, we recommend you to send an email to hello@dailytimeapp.com explaining the issue you are encountering, preferably including any debug logs.
In order to get these debug logs, please do the following:
1. Open Daily’s preferences via its main window by clicking on the configuration icon at the bottom (hover your mouse over the bottom if you do not see the configuration icon);
2. Enable the “Enable debug log” checkbox in the tab named “General”;
3. Reproduce the issue to make sure log entries are being added to the log files;
4. Open a Terminal instance and execute the following command that will create a file called “DailyLogs.zip” on your desktop:
zip -rj ~/Desktop/DailyLogs.zip ~/Library/Containers/nl.nielsmouthaan.daily.main/Data/Library/Logs/Daily/.
5. Attach the file “DailyLogs.zip” available on your desktop to the email.
If possible, indicate the date and time the issue occurred so we can better analyse the log files. Also make sure to disable Daily's debug feature again as it might slow down Daily.