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The timer

If you'd rather clock time as it happens, the timer gives you a running clock. It lives on the Home dashboard (the timer card at the top, or the center button on phones) and on its own Timer page. The timer is optional. Everything it produces is an ordinary time entry you could have typed in yourself, but it is handy when you want an exact record of a working session.

Starting the timer​

Pick a client, optionally pick a project ("No project" is always an option), and type a short description in the What are you working on? field. Then hit Start.

The clock counts up in hours, minutes, and seconds, and the timer card shows a green RUNNING badge. None of the fields are mandatory. You can start a completely blank timer and fill in the details later, even while it is running. Changes you make to the client, project, or description while the timer runs are saved right away. On a phone, tap the running card to open the full-screen view where those fields can be edited.

Restarting something recent​

When no timer is running, a small Recent line under the timer lists the last two things you worked on in the past two weeks, each with its project (or its client, when the entry had no project). Tap one and the timer starts right away with that description, client, and project filled in, so a session you repeat every day is one tap instead of three fields. A toast confirms the start and offers Undo for a few seconds; Undo cancels the timer and nothing is saved. The line is hidden while a timer runs, and it does not appear at all until you have logged something.

Stopping the timer​

Press Stop and Gigtime creates a time entry from the session:

  • The entry is dated to the day the timer started, so a session that runs past midnight lands on the day you began working.
  • The duration is the elapsed time in whole minutes. Gigtime does not round or pad your time unless you ask it to: 47 minutes is logged as 47 minutes. Sessions under a minute are recorded as 1 minute.
  • If you bill in blocks, the Rounding setting (Settings → General) rounds the duration up to the nearest 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes when the timer stops. It only applies to timer sessions. Manually logged entries are never rounded.

If the session was a false start, press Cancel (discard) on the Timer page instead. The timer is thrown away and no entry is created.

Reviewing an entry after Stop​

The entry is saved the instant you press Stop. If the timer ran without a description, Gigtime then opens that entry in a small review sheet so you can write down what the session was for while you still remember. The sheet shows the duration and the project, and lets you change three things:

  • the description (the cursor starts here; past descriptions are suggested as you type),
  • the duration, in hours and minutes, and
  • the billable switch.

Save applies your changes. Keep as is closes the sheet and leaves the entry exactly as it was saved. Discard entry deletes it, after a confirmation, for the times you meant to cancel instead of stop.

Because the entry is already saved before the sheet opens, closing the app or losing your connection at this point never loses tracked time. The worst case is an entry without notes, which you can edit later from the Entries page.

You can change when the sheet appears under Settings → General → Review entry on stop: only when notes are empty (the default), always, or never. If you write the description while the timer runs, the default setting never interrupts you.

Pausing​

Stepping away without ending the session? Press Pause. The clock freezes and the badge switches to PAUSED. Press Resume to keep going. Paused time is excluded from the recorded duration, and the paused state syncs to your other devices like everything else about the timer.

Forgotten timers​

A timer that is still running 24 hours after it started is stopped for you. Gigtime saves an entry on the day it started, using the elapsed time but capped at your Daily goal (Settings → General, 8 hours unless you changed it), rounded like any other timer stop. Paused timers count too: what matters is how long ago the timer was started. You get a notification with the saved duration so you can correct the entry if the real figure was different. It follows your Timer Reminders preference, so turning that off turns this notice off as well.

The 24 hours is a default. Settings → General → Stop forgotten timers lets you pick 12, 24, 48 or 72 hours, or Never if you would rather timers run until you stop them yourself.

Before that point, if you leave a timer running for a long stretch, Gigtime can remind you. See Notifications to choose when.

Cross-device sync​

The timer lives on the server, not on your device. Start it on your laptop and it shows up running on your phone, with the same elapsed time. Stop it from either one. Edits to the description or project made on one device appear on the others within a moment.

Gigtime also computes the elapsed time from server-synced clocks, so two devices with slightly different system times still show the same reading.

A few practical consequences:

  • Only one timer can run at a time. It is one clock, shared by all your devices.
  • Closing the app does not stop the timer. It keeps running on the server until you stop it from any device, or until the 24-hour limit above stops it for you.

Timer and ads​

On the free plan, stopping the timer occasionally shows an ad or an upgrade prompt. When the review sheet opens, the ad waits until you close the sheet. Pro users are never interrupted. See Free vs Pro.