What's this?

A primitive script that logs the name of the front-most application on your Mac to a file.

Why?

At the end of some amount of time, you can analyze your application use.

Install

cd into this project directory

cp app-logger.plist.example app-logger.plist

modify app-logger.plist to taste.

• change the application Label to something like com.example.app-logger
• change the application program to point to the app-logger.sh script
• StartInterval is how many seconds between each recorded application

Add a symlink to your plist in your LaunchAgents directory:

ln -s PATH/TO/FILE/app-logger.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/app-logger.plist

Give the Application Logger script permission to do its thing.

• Open System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy
• Go to the "Full Disk Access" pane
• add app-logger.sh to the list

Launch the agent

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/app-logger.plist

Note: you'll be prompted to allow the logger application to control System Events.

Uninstall

launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/app-logger.plist

rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/app-logger.plist

delete the project directory

What does it log?

The script writes a new line to a file every X seconds (default is 30). It records the name of the application, a time stamp, and a number in seconds that represents how long the Mac believes that the current user has been idle.