Support
Track the day, one tap at a time.
Spendly Time Track turns your 24 hours into a pie chart. Tap an activity to start tracking, tap it again to stop — and run as many timers at once as you need.
Quick start
- Open Records. Each tile is an activity, such as Sleep, Reading or Commute.
- Tap a tile to start its timer. The tile lifts into Liquid Glass and shows LIVE.
- Tap the same tile again to stop. The session is saved to the database immediately.
- Tap Stats to see where the hours went — Day, Week, Month or Year.
- Optional: add the Timer or Category Timers widget to your Home Screen to start and stop timers without opening the app.
Timers keep running while the app is in the background or closed, because each record stores an absolute start time. Reopen the app and the elapsed time is still correct.
Timers
Run several activities at once
Start any number of timers — for example “Commute” and “Podcast” together. While timers are running, a Now tracking strip appears above your categories; tap a capsule there to stop that activity. To stop everything, open Settings and use Stop All Timers.
Tiles and list layout
Switch between the grid and list layouts with the toolbar button in Records, or in Settings → Display → Layout. Your choice is remembered.
What the cards show
- Today ring — one revolution is always exactly 24 hours, so an arc is as long as the clock time it covers. A record that started yesterday (a night’s sleep) shows only its part after midnight, and a moment with two timers is drawn as two lanes over the same angle instead of adding time.
- Tile time — how much time you have tracked for that activity today, running timers included. Tiles report records, so they can add up to more than the ring.
- Category totals — the sum of its activities for today.
Ring details
Double-tap a ring — the Today ring or the Distribution ring in Stats — for a full-screen view: the same circle large enough to read a short block, every category openable to the activities behind it, and (on a day) the stretches where two timers ran at once listed by name. Both rings carry a small expand glyph in the middle as a reminder, and VoiceOver offers a “Show details” action.
Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets
Two widgets start and stop timers without opening the app. Both run the same timer code the app uses, so the widget and the record never disagree. A timer started from a Home Screen widget deliberately skips the Live Activity, which is what lets the same widget stop it instantly; start a timer in the app or on the Lock Screen when you want the Dynamic Island. A widget button never opens the app; tap anywhere else on the widget to jump to Records. The Timer widget is also available on the Lock Screen — as a circular glyph next to the clock or a rectangular row — so a timer can start or finish without unlocking the phone.
A tap writes the record and asks WidgetKit to redraw. A timer started from a Home Screen widget flips immediately, because the widget extension performs the whole change itself. A Lock Screen tap and stopping a timer that was started in the app go through the app instead — that is the only place a Live Activity can be created or ended, and iOS schedules those widget redraws a little later. The button dims while it is held down, and the new state appears as soon as the write lands.
| Widget | Sizes | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Timer | Small, medium, large, and the Lock Screen (circular, rectangular) | One activity with its icon, a caption (“since 10:15” or “1h 20m today”) and a start/stop capsule. The caption is a fixed label, not a counter, so the widget is not redrawn every second. On the Lock Screen the whole circle or rectangle is the button: the circle wears the app's own day ring, with a clock face while the timer runs and a play mark when it is idle. |
| Category Timers | Medium, large | The activities of one category, each with its own round start/stop button. Medium fits three rows and large six; when a category has more activities, the running ones stay visible first. |
Add and configure a widget
- Touch and hold an empty area of the Home Screen, then tap Edit (or +).
- Search for Spendly Time, choose a size and add the widget.
- Touch and hold the placed widget and choose Edit Widget. The Timer widget asks for one activity; Category Timers asks for one category. Each widget has exactly one picker, so it can never show two conflicting choices.
For the Lock Screen, touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, then add the Spendly Time Timer widget in a circular or rectangular slot and choose its activity. A Lock Screen tap starts or stops the timer in the app's process, so it also creates the Live Activity — the Lock Screen card and the Dynamic Island follow the tap.
The app and the widget share an App Group container, and the widget reads a small read-only snapshot the app writes after every change. Opening the app once after installing or updating is enough to create it. Before that the widget says Not synced yet — that is not an error, and it fills in as soon as the app has been opened. If a widget ever looks stale, open the app once: a change made in the app or through a widget button updates it immediately, and opening the app re-publishes anything a widget tap could not hand over to the other widget.
Lifetime Membership
Every feature is free for seven days from the first time the app opens. After that, one purchase — Lifetime Membership — unlocks the app for good. It is a single payment, not a subscription: there is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel, and the price shown in the app is the App Store price for your country.
Settings → Lifetime Membership shows how much of the week is left and the date it ends, what the purchase unlocks, the price as your App Store charges it, and Restore Purchase. When the week is over, a banner on the Records tab links to the same screen, so nothing is hidden behind a guess.
When the week ends the app becomes read-only. Your records stay visible, the statistics keep working, and a backup can still be exported, because your data is yours. Starting a timer, editing categories and activities, correcting a record and importing a backup need the purchase — and a timer that is already running can always be stopped.
The trial starts on the first launch and is remembered in the Keychain, so deleting the app does not restart it. The purchase is tied to your Apple Account: on a new device, sign in and tap Settings → Lifetime Membership → Restore Purchase. The week itself is not a StoreKit free trial — Apple only offers those for auto-renewable subscriptions.
Refunds
Every payment is taken by the App Store, so Apple issues any refund — the app cannot charge, cancel or refund anything itself. To request one for Lifetime Membership, open reportaproblem.apple.com and sign in with the Apple Account that made the purchase. Apple decides the outcome, and the developer is not told why a refund was requested.
When a refund is approved, the App Store revokes the purchase. The app reads the entitlement on every launch and again whenever you tap Restore Purchase, so it returns to the trial rules: while the seven free days are still running the app stays unlocked, and after them it becomes read-only. Nothing is deleted — your categories, activities and records stay readable, the statistics keep working and a backup can still be exported. Buying Lifetime Membership again restores the unlock, including after a refund.
A refund can take a few days to reach the device. If Apple has confirmed it and the app still looks unlocked, open Settings → Lifetime Membership → Restore Purchase; that re-reads the App Store's own state instead of the cached one.
Focus reminders
Any activity can carry a focus block — the length of one working stint, for example 45 minutes. When a running timer reaches it, the app posts one local notification (“Deep Work · 45 min done”) so you can take a break or switch to the next activity.
- Open Settings → Categories & Activities and edit an activity (or create one).
- Turn on Focus reminder and pick the block length: 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes.
- Save. The next time you start that activity the reminder is scheduled automatically.
While the block is running, its Now tracking chip, its tile and its list row show a slim progress bar next to the minutes left, so you can see the block filling up without opening the notification.
The timer keeps running after the reminder — the app never stops an activity for you. Each running timer gets exactly one reminder for its block, and stopping the timer cancels it. If iOS notifications are off, the app says so in the editor; enable them in iOS Settings → Notifications → Spendly Time.
Categories and activities
A category groups related activities. For example Study can contain Deep Work, Reading and Courses. The default library is fully editable.
- Open Settings → Categories & Activities.
- Tap + to create a category: name it, pick a color and an icon.
- Open the category and tap + to add activities to it.
- Swipe a row to edit or delete.
- Tap Edit, then drag the handles to reorder categories, or activities inside a category. The new order is saved in the database.
- Archive an activity you no longer use. It disappears from Records, but its history is kept.
Deleting an activity or category also deletes its recorded time. Every confirmation in the app — deleting an activity or category, stopping all timers, replacing the database — appears as a prompt in the centre of the screen. Archive instead if you may want the history later — and export a backup before any major cleanup.
Live Activities
Starting a timer also starts a Live Activity. On the Lock Screen it shows as a card with the activity icon, its name and a fixed summary — “Since 10:15 AM · 18h 20m today”, or, when other timers run, “Also tracking Nap · 18h 20m today”. In the Dynamic Island it shows as a pill with the activity icon and the timer’s start time, plus a “+N” badge when other timers are running alongside.
Expanding the island (long-press; iOS decides when the expanded view appears, apps cannot disable it) shows four corners of detail: the activity name on the left, the elapsed time on the right, when the timer started in the lower-left corner and how much of today is tracked in the lower-right corner.
The pill and the Lock Screen card deliberately use fixed labels: a counter that ticks every second would make iOS redraw both surfaces for the whole session. The live clock lives in the expanded island and counts total hours past a day (26 hours reads as “26:15:07”, never “1d 2h”). Tap the island or the card to open the app. The activity ends when you stop the last running timer.
With several timers running, the Live Activity headlines the one that started first: the card says “Also tracking Nap · 18h 20m today” and the pill’s trailing label adds a “+N” badge. The island can only show one headline timer; open the app to see every running timer side by side.
Statistics
| Range | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Day | The full 24 hours: tracked categories plus the untracked remainder, and one bar per hour of the clock — an overnight record fills the hours it occupied, and overlapping timers stack in their own colours. |
| Week | Seven days, with daily bars and a category breakdown. |
| Month | Every day in the month, plus per-category totals. |
| Year | Twelve monthly buckets and the year’s distribution. |
Use the arrows to move to a previous or next period, and the refresh button to reload. Tap a category in Breakdown to expand its activities.
Correcting a record
Tap an activity in Breakdown to see the records behind its number, then tap a record to fix it: file it under the right activity, or change when it started and ended. The statistics follow immediately — a reassigned record moves to its new category, and changing the end date moves it to the day it now ends on, which is the day it counts on.
Only finished records can be corrected. The timer that is running right now is owned by its Live Activity and by the widget button that can stop it, so it is left alone until it stops. Every correction keeps the values the record had before it, listed under “Earlier versions” in the editor, so a mistaken fix can be read back.
Why can tracked time exceed 24 hours?
Parallel timers overlap — running “Commute” and “Podcast” at the same time counts both — and an activity’s number sums its records, including a night that started yesterday. The ring is the one place that cannot pass 24 hours: it draws the day as it happened, shows a parallel stretch as two lanes over the same angle, and leaves out yesterday’s part of an overnight record.
Backup and restore
Everything lives in one SQLite database file. Backups are portable copies of that file.
Export
- Open Settings → Backup.
- Tap Export Database.
- Choose where to send the file in the share sheet — Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop, Mail, and so on.
Import
- Open Settings → Backup → Import Database.
- Pick a previously exported
.sqlitefile. - Confirm in the prompt that appears in the centre of the screen. The file is checked first, then copied into place.
Import replaces all current categories, activities and records. A safety copy of the previous database is kept in the app’s Backups folder, and its filename is shown after the import.
About screen
Settings → About shows the number of records, categories and activities, the app version, and links to the privacy policy and this support page.
FAQ
Why is the app read-only?
The seven free days have ended. Settings → Lifetime Membership unlocks the app; your records,
statistics and backups are untouched either way.
I bought it before. How do I unlock it again?
Settings → Lifetime Membership → Restore Purchase. The purchase belongs to the Apple Account
that made it, so sign in with that account first.
Does the app sync between devices?
Not in version 1.1.1. Data is local to each device. Export the database on one device and import it on another to move your history.
Do I need an internet connection?
No. Tracking, statistics and backups work entirely offline. Only the Privacy and Support links need a browser.
Can I edit the start or end time of a record?
Not yet. Tap the tile to stop a timer and start again if you need a new segment.
I deleted an activity by accident. Can I get its time back?
Only from a backup. If you exported one before deleting, import it in Settings → Backup. This is why the app keeps a safety copy when you import.
Will my data survive an app update?
Yes. Updating keeps the app’s data container. The one-time move of an existing database into the shared App Group container runs only on the first launch after such an update, and the originals are removed only after every file has been copied, so an interrupted move leaves your data where it was. Deleting the app removes it, so export a backup first if you plan to reinstall.
The numbers look different after midnight.
A record belongs to the day it ended on. A sleep from 23:12 to 06:30 is one record and one number: 7h 18m on the day you woke up, not 48 minutes on one day and 6h 30m on the next. The ring is the other way round — it is the clock, so it shows only that night’s 00:00–06:30. The Today card says how much of the day’s records happened before midnight.
Why is the ring shorter than the sum of my activities?
Because the ring is the clock. A night that started at 23:12 contributes only its part after midnight, and a minute with two timers is one angle split into two lanes rather than two arcs. The pills, tiles and breakdown report records, so they can be larger. Open the ring’s full-screen view to see which activities a block is made of.
Does the layout adapt to iPad and foldables?
Yes. The interface uses size classes and system bars, so it adapts to iPad multitasking, landscape, and iPhone Duo poses, including the side-mounted controls.
Why don’t the island pill and the Lock Screen card count seconds?
They show fixed labels — the timer’s start time on the pill, “Since 10:15 AM · 18h 20m today” on the card — because a counter that ticks every second would make iOS redraw both surfaces for the whole session. The expanded island is the one place with a live clock, since it only exists while you hold it open; durations over 24 hours keep counting total hours (26:15:07, never “1d 2h”). The app’s Now tracking strip still shows each running timer to the second.
The widget says “Not synced yet”.
Open Spendly Time once. The widget reads a snapshot the app writes on every change, and the first launch after installing or updating also moves an existing database into the shared container. Until that has happened the widget has nothing to draw.
Why can’t the Category Timers widget show just one activity?
Because iOS cannot hide a widget parameter conditionally, a single widget with both an activity and a category picker could show contradictory choices. The widgets are split instead: Timer for one activity, Category Timers for a whole category.
Does tapping a widget button open the app?
No. The start/stop button runs the same action in the background, so your Home Screen stays put. Tap the rest of the widget to open Records.
Why does the island open into a large card when I press it?
That expanded view is drawn by iOS, not by the app, and Apple gives apps no way to turn it off. It appears on a long press or when the system decides to show an update. Swipe up anywhere on the screen to collapse it again.
Contact
Still stuck, found a bug, or have a feature request? Include your device model, iOS version and app version if you can.