See your team's full workday through app and website data

DeskTime automatically logs every app and website used during work hours, so you can see where time actually goes and which tools are pulling focus away from core work.

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TL;DR: DeskTime works as a background process that tracks all device usage: active apps and accessed websites. This way, you can monitor how work hours are used during the day, analyze productivity metrics (how much time of the day was spent in productive apps), and identify distractions or inefficiencies.

How does URL and app tracking with DeskTime work?

A screenshot of DeskTime's URL and app tracking feature
Download the app

To track the websites and apps your team uses, they need to install the desktop app.

A screenshot of DeskTime's URL and app tracking feature
DeskTime logs activities

Check the dashboard to see how much time was spent on each app/URL – down to the second.

A screenshot of DeskTime's URL and app tracking feature
Measure productivity

Set each website's productivity status to analyze everyone's productivity and effectiveness.

How to manage app productivity settings

Learn how to classify apps as productive, unproductive, or neutral for accurate time tracking.

Desktime video

Why URL and app tracking is the way to go for your business

This feature can help you not only manage your team in a better way but also provide you with insights into the way work is organized.

An image of a woman sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen.

Performance evaluation

Since website and app tracking goes hand in hand with productivity calculation, it's easy to spot your best performers.

Optimized resource management

If your 20-person team is averaging 1.5 hours daily on unproductive sites, that's 30 hours of paid work time lost every day—the equivalent of nearly 4 full-time employees doing nothing. When you know the sites your team uses every day, you can make concrete decisions.

Focus on priorities

Analyzing app usage over 2–4 weeks reveals patterns that one-off check-ins miss entirely. A developer spending 30% of tracked time in Slack rather than their IDE, or a sales rep whose CRM usage drops sharply on Fridays, are signals that your team is losing sight of priorities.

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Let website and app tracking help you forget these worries

Slackers

People who only pretend to work by looking busy will have a harder time bypassing the system.

Unproductive habits

Accidentally wasting half a day on funny YouTube videos will become a thing of the past.

Uncertainty about remote teams

No need to wonder what remote team members do all day – see that work is getting done.

Don’t take our word for it

Want to hear from our users? Discover their reviews on G2.

Marc Miquel

Senior User Researcher, Enterprise

"Desktime helps me stay productive and to limit time"

"I know that at the end of the week, I want not to exceed a certain number of hours, but I also set myself some productivity % goals (time focused on certain apps / total time). I have used it for more than 7 years."
Sreejith B.

Assistant Manager, Mid-Market

"Efficient time tracking and productivity insights with DeskTime"

"I am an IT admin as well as a project lead. My job is to monitor and manage my employees, who mainly work from home. With DeskTime, we can measure their productivity, monitor their worktime activity, and evaluate their performance based on their time efficiency."
Diego Carballo

CISO, Mid-Market

"Highly efficient tool"

It allows me to see where I spend my day, find opportunities to improve my productivity, and balance my work with necessary breaks. It’s a tool that gives me clarity without being intrusive. It also allows me to control my work team and measure their level of productivity.
Portrait of Tarun, a DeskTime customer and reviewer
Tarun S.

Head of Product, Small-Business

"Amazing choice for tracking performance of employees"

DeskTime provides valuable intelligence and support for managing our distributed teams. It offers easily digestible performance metrics for our remote employees. Their competitive pricing further solidified our decision.
Portrait of Abhay, a DeskTime customer and reviewer
Abhay Singh Rana

UI/UX Designer, Mid-Market

"Perfect activity tracking"

It helps our company's hybrid culture by tracking the productivity of every employee working from home and generating weekly reports to review everyone's performance accurately. The software also helps employees focus more on their tasks without being distracted by unproductive apps or sites.
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Verified User

Computer Software, Mid-Market

"Efficient and user-friendly time tracking tool"

With its detailed reports and automatic time tracking, we can optimize workflows, improve project planning, and ensure accurate billing for client work. This has led to better productivity insights, more efficient time management, and enhanced team performance overall.
Natasha Sierra

Practice Manager, Mid-Market

"Has improved our staff's productivity"

DeskTime assists us in monitoring productivity, tracking time spent on tasks, and identifying workflow inefficiencies. It provides valuable information, which supports better team management and accountability.
Parminder Singh U.

CEO, Mid-Market

"Efficient time tracking and productivity enhancement with DeskTime"

With DeskTime’s automatic idle time and break detection features, we easily monitor the work-life balance within teams. It eliminates the need for manual reporting, leaving no room for error.
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Verified User

Computer Software, Small-Business

"One of the best tools for remote teams management and instant reporting."

I really like that it has clock-in, clock-out, and holiday management. It's easy to use, and I implemented it very fast. The support that I was offered was great!

How DeskTime works

With DeskTime, you can see your employees' arrival and departure times, analyze their productivity, schedule shifts, oversee absences, maintain a healthy work-life balance, keep track of specific projects, and more.

Step 1 to start using DeskTime: Sign up and download the desktop app
Sign Up
Create an account and download the DeskTime app.
Step 2 to start using DeskTime: Add your employee details and create teams
Add your team details
Add your employees individually or in batches and sort them into teams.
Step 3 to start using DeskTime: Start tracking time and see productivity insights
Start tracking!
Read this article on how to use our time tracking tool and communicate it to your employees.

Highly rated and globally trusted

G2 badge for Leader in Employee Monitoring software category, Summer 2026
Sourceforge badge for Leader of Automatic Time Tracking software in Spring 2026
Top Business Software badge for Top Rated software in the Time Tracking category, Spring 2026
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G2 milestone badge for most loved software in the Automatic Time Tracking category, Summer 2026
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G2 Star rating 4.5/5 avg. (2000+ reviews)

Explore more features

Automatic time tracking Manual time tracking URL & app tracking Project tracking Productivity calculation Document title tracking Reports Exports Admin dashboard Shift scheduling Absence calendar Screenshots User dashboard Integrations & API Customizable settings AI summary IP location
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Frequently asked questions about URL and app tracking

The DeskTime app offers several features to help managers learn more about their employees' habits. With URL and app tracking, screenshots, and document title tracking, you can get a comprehensive picture of everyone's workday and where their time went. You can look at the trends and habits of your team in the admin dashboard or reports. DeskTime also offers such options as Private time to allay employees' fears about their privacy – when Private time is turned on, all tracking stops, giving the team member a chance to take care of personal matters during work hours without being monitored.
To monitor your employees' computer usage, you'll need a dedicated time tracking app like DeskTime, which offers such features as URL and app tracking. The app tracks time and activities in the background, giving a precise and detailed overview of everyone's day. If you combine the general time tracking with Project tracking, you'll know exactly how work is progressing and what everyone is focusing on at a given time.
Usually, employee monitoring is done with the help of dedicated software. DeskTime, for example, offers various features that can help you learn more about your team's day, including website and app tracking and screenshots. The app's settings can be customized for your team, and the features can be turned on or off, so depending on how much information you want to get, select the features you'd like to use and that your team is comfortable with.
It is true that managers often worry about overseeing remote employees – it's more of a hassle to check in on someone remotely rather than quick chats at the office. This is where time tracking apps like DeskTime can come in handy. The app can track your team members' activities, including the apps and websites they use throughout the day; as a manager, you get a clear picture of how work is getting done, what projects everyone is focusing on, etc. The app's most basic function – time tracking – can ease your mind that everyone's putting in the required hours – a particularly useful feature if your team works in different time zones.
Yes, more and more companies are using time tracking software that helps to understand better how their teams work. Time tracking became particularly popular with the rise of remote and hybrid work – managers needed a new way to keep up with their team members' work when not at the office. DeskTime offers various tracking options, depending on how much detail you want, from simple arrival/departure time logs to more detailed tracking options like URL and app tracking.
Yes, it's possible for employers to monitor the computer usage of their employees. DeskTime's URL and app tracking feature logs which apps and websites your team members visit and use during the day and how much time was spent on each. This feature is closely related to the productivity calculation feature; each app and URL is given a productivity status (productive, unproductive, neutral), and the tracking data is used to measure everyone's productivity and effectiveness.
To analyze app and website usage for work, start by classifying each app and URL in DeskTime as productive, unproductive, or neutral based on your team's role. A design tool like Figma is productive for a designer but neutral for an account manager—the classification should reflect actual job requirements, not generic assumptions.

Once classified, look at three things: (1) the productive vs. unproductive time ratio per employee over a 2–4 week baseline, (2) which specific apps account for the largest share of unproductive time, and (3) whether usage patterns shift across days of the week or before deadlines.

For a 20–100 person service team, this analysis typically surfaces 2–3 workflow bottlenecks: tools that create context-switching, meetings that displace deep work hours, or apps that are being used far more than anticipated in project cost estimates.
The regulations for employee monitoring can differ from country to country, so if you plan to implement a monitoring tool, double-check the specific rules of the country or countries you operate in. In any case, ensuring that your employees' privacy is still protected, even with monitoring, is crucial. The URL and app tracking data can provide valuable insights into how your teammates organize their days. However, remember that no one can be 100% productive all day, and breaks and occasional distractions are a welcome and necessary part of everyone's workday. So don't forget to inform your employees about the Private time functionality.
We at DeskTime believe that monitoring should not be done in secret – in our opinion, transparency and honesty are key. If the monitoring is done secretly and the data is used only to punish people, employees will perceive the tracking tool with suspicion and fear. But it could be used as a positive reinforcement, a way to increase productivity, and a method to maintain work-life balance.
Monitoring employee computer usage can be done ethically; it's always important to remember that tracking data should not be used to spy on the employees. The goal with such features as Screenshots and URL and app tracking is to provide a general overview of everyone's day and to reassure employers that their resources are not wasted – that everyone is focused on work during work hours. Trust between employers and employees goes both ways.
Often, when tracking apps are introduced in a workplace, the first reaction of employees tends to be negative – they may feel like their employers don't trust them and that their work will be spied on. That's why introducing such an app is an extremely important step; employers should explain precisely how they intend to use the monitoring software and what kind of data they will be looking at. It's always a good idea to focus on the positive and lead by example – show your team members that you'll be using the app for yourself, too, to improve your productivity and address their concerns from the beginning.
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