TimePrivate is a Mac time tracker for a solo lawyer or a small firm that wants client and matter sitting on the device, with the bill landing in tenths of an hour after you have approved the day. It records the desk, waits for you to sign the day off, and bills that day in tenths. Clio and the BigLaw suites do the rest of a practice; this one stays on time and the invoice.
TimePrivate is not released. There is no download, no trial and no purchase today. Apple Silicon Macs first, Windows on the roadmap.
| Clock time | Tenth on the bill |
|---|---|
| 6 minutes | 0.1 |
| 12 minutes | 0.2 |
| 18 minutes | 0.3 |
| 30 minutes | 0.5 |
| 54 minutes | 0.9 |
| 60 minutes | 1.0 |
A tenth of an hour is six minutes, which is still the unit a lot of US legal billing uses, and the unit TimePrivate uses once you have signed off the day. 0.1 on the invoice is six minutes of work you approved, so a client who expects 0.2, 0.5 or 1.4 will recognize the number. While you are still cleaning the day, the app can draft in 5, 15 or 30 minute increments; those are just a way to snap the raw capture, and the bill itself is tenths. If you want to see a week in tenths right now, the TimePrivate work hours calculator already has a nearest six minute option and needs nothing installed.
Planned pricing is $9 a month or $79 a year, waitlist only, which is a Mac tracker price rather than a practice management subscription.
Client names, matter names, and a week of browser domains can sit close to information your professional rules care about. TimePrivate keeps that file in a local SQLite style database on your Mac, with no TimePrivate account and no TimePrivate server. Whether that satisfies your bar, your insurer, or a client's outside counsel guidelines is something you decide with those documents, not with a marketing page.
A supervising partner cannot open a dashboard from another city, and nothing in the capture is a screenshot. Automatic tracking writes the frontmost app and the browser domain, offers idle time back when a timer is running, and waits for you to approve the day before any of it is billable. If a colleague needs the week, you export a file.
A client is the person or company you bill, with a bill-to printed on their PDF. They never get a login. You can map a domain or an app to that client so the daily draft arrives already pointed at them.
A matter is the project name: the name on the physical file, or the numbering you already use. TimePrivate does not add conflict checks or a file-opening wizard on top of that.
Both live in the local database, and nobody else gets a seat. Optional folder sync through iCloud or Dropbox is a folder you point at, on a machine you control. Leave it off if your own policy says the matter file stays on that Mac.
A rule is how a Tuesday on github.com becomes 0.4 on a named matter instead of a pile of unlabelled minutes.
The same rule works for a local app, so a day in Pages can belong to one matter if that is where the memo lives, and when the mapping is wrong you just edit the draft. Automatic capture is there so a forgotten timer does not erase the afternoon; you still file the matter. The longer note on what gets written down, and what never is, lives on the automatic time tracking page.
Draft rounding of 5, 15 or 30 minutes is still useful while you clean the day, and the bill TimePrivate produces for lawyer work is tenths, so keep those two increments separate when you explain a line to a client.
App in front, domain in the browser, idle offered back. A closed-lid hearing will not appear, so add those hours by hand when you return.
Nothing is billable until you say so, which is what keeps a time entry from becoming a monitoring feed.
TimePrivate bills in tenths. The PDF can carry rates, tax, expenses, a due date and the client's bill-to, on this machine. The invoicing path is the operations write-up.
Duplicate next month if the matter is a retainer. Statuses live next to the entries so you can answer which week a tenth came from.
If a bookkeeper or a co-counsel needs the week, you export a file, because there is no manager dashboard for them to open.
Planned at $9 a month or $79 a year, with nothing to download today and no seat license that grows with headcount.
Suppose the Mac saw 36 minutes on a client staging host you mapped to Northshore 2026-014, 18 minutes in Mail that you decide was the same matter, and 70 minutes on a browser domain that belongs to a different client. A running timer then offers 12 minutes of idle after a call. You keep those 12 minutes on 2026-014.
After you approve the day, TimePrivate bills those lawyer hours in tenths. Northshore is 36 + 18 + 12 minutes, which is 66 minutes, which is 1.1 on the bill, not a raw minute dump onto a client who expects 0.1 increments. The other client gets their own tenths on their own bill-to. Nothing from the first matter leaks onto the second PDF because the invoice is built from approved, labelled time, not from "whatever the frontmost app was".
A hearing with the lid closed still has to be typed, because automatic capture cannot invent it. Treat the draft as the desk record and the calendar as the appearance record, then reconcile both before the bill goes out.
Clio is practice management: matters, documents, billing, a firm database in their cloud. TimePrivate is a Mac time tracker with local invoices. If you need the rest of the practice operating system, stay with the category built for it.
There is no timekeeper hierarchy, no office-level reporting, and no integration bench for a records department, so a two-hundred lawyer shop will bounce off this immediately. The audience is a solo or a small firm that bills its own tenths.
If outside counsel guidelines require a specific e-billing format or a designated vendor, TimePrivate does not negotiate that. Produce a PDF and a CSV if they will take it. If they will not, keep their system and keep your own copy anyway.
Yes. TimePrivate bills lawyer time in tenths. 0.1 is six minutes. The on-page work hours calculator already offers a 6 minute, tenth option if you want that arithmetic today.
Yes. Clients and projects exist in the local database. The project name can be the matter name or number you already use. You can map github.com, or another domain or app, to that client and project.
No claim of that kind is being made. TimePrivate keeps the file on your Mac with no TimePrivate account. Whether that satisfies your professional obligations is a question for you and, if you have one, counsel who advises the firm.
Not in any useful sense. Clio runs a practice. TimePrivate tracks time and produces a PDF invoice on a Mac. If you need matter management, documents and firm billing in one cloud system, stay with the category built for that.
The app draft rounding available today is 5, 15 or 30 minutes. Lawyer billing in TimePrivate is tenths on the bill. Use the work hours calculator's tenth option if you want to preview a week in 0.1 increments in the browser.
There is no manager dashboard. If someone else needs the week, you export a file, which works for a solo or small firm and will not work for a supervised timekeeper model.
No. TimePrivate cannot stop another program from running on the same Mac. It simply does not take screenshots or log keys itself.
No. Waitlist only. Planned pricing is $9 a month or $79 a year, Apple Silicon first, Windows on the roadmap. No download, no trial, no Stripe on this site.
If you bill in tenths from one Mac, join the waitlist and we will write when TimePrivate opens.
Not released yet. Leave your email and we will write to you the day it opens.