5 best tools for GitHub time tracking [2024 Reviews]

If you’re an individual or business involved in software development, you probably use GitHub — a leading code hosting and version control platform.

But when dealing with various GitHub repositories, issues, and requests, developers could easily lose track of time spent on a particular project.

So, it’s a great practice to track the time you or your team spends on GitHub. It helps monitor productivity, log time for individual projects, and create accurate invoices.

However, GitHub doesn’t have a native time tracking functionality.
Then, how do you track time on GitHub?

In this article, we’ll share five excellent GitHub time tracking tools. We’ll also explore five top features of the GitHub platform and some handy tips to get the best out of the platform.

This article contains:

(click on the link below to jump to a specific section)

5 Best Tools For GitHub Time Tracking
Top GitHub Features to Streamline Your Workflow
Smart Tips to Maximize GitHub Benefits

Let’s get started.

5 best tools for GitHub time tracking

While GitHub offers a ton of impressive software development features, it lacks native time tracking functionality.

Thankfully, many third-party time tracking tools integrate with GitHub to help you track your programming activity while offering several additional features as well.

Here’re five of the best time tracking apps that you can use to measure hours on GitHub accurately.

1. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a popular time tracking and productivity management tool used by large companies like Ericsson and SMBs like Thrive Market to track and boost employee productivity.

Its standalone time tracking functionality helps you conveniently track the time you and your team spend working away on GitHub issues and repositories.

You can use Time Doctor on multiple platforms like Windows, Macs, Linux, and Android devices.

How to time on GitHub using Time Doctor

Here’s a step-by-step guide to set up Time Doctor and GitHub integration using Chrome extension and start tracking time:

Step 1: Download and install the interactive version of the Time Doctor desktop app.

Step 2: Open the app and sign up for a free Time Doctor account.

Step 3: Next, go to Settings > Company Settings and enable the Projects & Tasks feature.

Step 4: Now, navigate to Settings > Integrations from the drop-down menu and enable the Chrome extension.

Note: Your team members will receive a notification asking them to install the Time Doctor extension from the Chrome web store.

Step 5: Go to the Chrome web store and install the Time Doctor extension.

Step 6: Once installed, team members will see a Time Doctor ‘start’ timer button next to all GitHub issues.

Your team can now easily track time following these simple steps:

Hit the ‘stop’ button once you finish the task or if you want to take a break.

Repeat the above steps for each issue you want to track time for.

Admins can check the amount of time each user spends on a GitHub project or task. Also, they can select a date range to see:

What tasks a team member is working on in real-time.
Time spent on various projects by each employee.
Total time spent on a specific issue across the company.

That was easy, right? But wait, there’s more!

Time Doctor offers a ton of added functionalities to boost your team’s performance.

Key features

Here are some powerful Time Doctor features:

A. Idle time and distraction alerts

Besides tracking time, it’s important to ensure that employees spend their time productively.

Time Doctor tracks the time your employees remain idle throughout their workday. The app measures idle minutes as the stretch when the user actively tracked time, but there was no keyboard or mouse activity on the computer.

Project managers can set the time range an employee can remain idle, beyond which the app will show a pop-up alert, asking employees if they’re still working.

Note: Time Doctor doesn’t record your keystrokes or mouse activity to protect user privacy.

Time Doctor will also show a pop-up if a user loses focus and accesses a non-work-related app or website. These alerts help your employees self-correct unproductive behavior and increase the company throughput.

B. Detailed productivity reports

With Time Doctor’s detailed productivity reports, employers can get an insight into their team’s productivity and time usage.

Some of these reports include:

Activity summary report: Shows an employee’s active, unproductive, manual, and mobile time for a selected time range.
Timeline report: See the time an employee spends working and on breaks in daily and weekly formats.
Hours tracked report: See your team’s work hour data during a specific date range.
Projects & tasks report: Take note of the time an employee spends on different projects and tasks.
Web & app usage report: Lists the sites and applications employees use during work hours and their time on each of them.

C. Screencasts (optional)

This Time Doctor feature lets employers take screenshots of employee workscreens to ensure they’re working productively on their tasks.

Your team members will refrain from engaging in distracting activities such as social media browsing when they’re aware of being monitored during working hours.

Note: To protect employee privacy, you can blur or delete screenshots with sensitive information.

D. Integrated payroll

Once you have accurate time data for various GitHub projects, you can use Time Doctor’s integrated payroll system to process your team’s payments.

The feature lets you pay your employees conveniently using popular payment gateways like ADP, Payoneer, etc. The tool also allows you to export your payment data in CSV, XLS, or PDF for further processing.

Pricing

Time Doctor’s paid plans start at $7/user per month and come with a free 14-day trial (no credit card required).

Customer ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (250+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (350+ reviews)