How do I see what I worked on at the Mac?

Goal

Let Nova note which app was in front, then look at the time in the time ledger and accept it.

Before you start

• Expert view. The Work time page is only there. The switch is in How do I switch between Simple and Expert?
• For window titles, the Accessibility permission. See Which macOS permissions does Nova need?

Steps

1. Settings, Work time, tab Mac activity. Check Record Mac activity. It is off by default. Below it, Recording is on then shows.
2. Record window titles and browser addresses is a box of its own. If the permission is missing, the button Allow Accessibility shows below it. Of addresses Nova keeps only site and path, without search terms. For documents such as Word or Preview, Nova also keeps the folder of the file, without the file name.
3. The same card has Detect meetings by microphone, Let AI sort unknown apps and websites, and Pause after idle. Under Detect projects you enter keywords per project, separated by commas.
4. To look: in the menu at the Nova icon, Work time. If the item has a submenu, choose Open time ledger. The sidebar lists Calendar and Timesheet under Capture, and Tracked time, Productivity, Apps & Websites, and Utilization under Analyze.
5. Timesheet: entries from Mac activity are pending. Only Accept writes an entry to the time ledger. Approve all asks first and names the number of entries.
6. Apps & Websites shows the blocks of one day with app, title, and address. Stop recording creates a rule for that app or site.
7. Settings, Work time, tab Rules, card Apps, websites and profiles. Each app, website, or browser profile has the columns Titles, Idle = break, and Don’t track. In the Labels tab you create your own labels with a category. With Automatic, the AI gives a label according to your AI instruction.
8. With iCloud sync, the time ledger shows all Macs together. The Macs menu in the sidebar switches to a single Mac.
9. Calendar, Day view: dragging across a range in the Ledger column opens a new entry with those times. Dashed blocks “Nothing logged” show time of 15 minutes or more when you were at the Mac but nothing is in the time ledger. A click adds it. A click on an event in the Calendar column takes it as work time.
10. At the top of the day summary is one sentence about the day, for example “Today 6:40 h, mostly Website, 2 meetings, Communication in the afternoon.” The card “Daily target reached” shows the same sentence. Nova builds it on the Mac, without an AI model.
11. Rules tab, card Rules with conditions: a rule assigns time by title, address, app or folder, for example “Title contains Website Weekly → project Website”, if you like only at a certain time and on certain weekdays. The top matching rule wins. If you move the same entry to the same project twice in the Timesheet, Nova asks “Always assign it like this?” and creates the rule on Yes.

Example

Turn on Record Mac activity, work for a morning, then Open time ledger, Timesheet, and accept the pending entries.

Common problems

• The pages under Capture and Analyze are locked. Mac activity is off. The button Set up Mac activity leads to the setting.
• Accept skips time that is already taken in the ledger by a stamp, a running timer, or an import. While the timer runs, blocks from that time cannot be accepted.
• Nova never records password managers or banking. For mail and messages Nova stores only the app, without titles.
• Blocks with title and address stay on this Mac for 30 days, not in iCloud and not in the backup. Daily totals stay for one year.
• Let AI sort unknown apps and websites sends app names and domains to your model, no window titles. Local or cloud follows the source Mac activity under Privacy & security, tab Classes & sources. See How does an answer stay on this Mac?
• Rules with conditions go to your other Macs with iCloud sync. Their values can be words from window titles.