Privacy
WinHours records where your screen time goes, on your PC, for you. It never sends what you did anywhere.
What WinHours reads
- The app in front, and when you switch to another one.
- The title of the window in front, every two seconds, like "Inbox - Outlook" or "report.docx - Word".
- The site in Chrome, Brave or Edge, from the address bar, and only its name (
github.com), never the rest of the address. A private, incognito or InPrivate window is never read: its time counts for the browser, with no site and no title. - Whether you are there: the time since your last mouse or keyboard input, and whether the app in front is playing sound or video or using the microphone, so a film or a call is not counted as away.
- What plays on your other screen, when you have two: whether a window there is playing video or sound (in a browser, its own tab strip says which tab plays), and that window's title and site, so what you watch beside your work is counted on its own.
- Site icons, from the icon store Chrome, Brave and Edge already keep on your PC. WinHours copies the store, reads the icons of the sites it already has, keeps only those icons, and deletes the copy at once. Nothing is downloaded.
It never reads what you type, what is on the screen, or the contents of files or web pages, and no window besides the one in front and one playing on your other screen.
What stays on your PC
Everything WinHours records: the apps, sites, window titles and times, and your categories and settings. They live in one folder, %LOCALAPPDATA%\WinHours, as one database file you can copy or delete. Nothing in it leaves your PC.
Window titles are the most personal part, so Settings, General, Keep details lets you keep them for three months, a year, or forever (the default). Day totals are kept in any case.
What WinHours sends
A daily update check. Once a day WinHours asks our server whether there is a new version, and downloads it from there if there is. The request carries WinHours' version and nothing else. Like any web request it shows your IP address to Cloudflare, which runs the server; we don't keep it. We only count how many checks and downloads arrive each day, by version.
Anonymous usage and error data. Once a day, a small report helps us fix crashes and keep WinHours light. It is on to start with, and one switch in Settings, About turns it off; off, nothing is counted or sent and what was collected is deleted. (WinHours still notes the day it was installed, on your PC, so a report can say "installed a week ago" if you turn it back on.) The report holds only these fields:
| Field | What it says |
|---|---|
| Version | The WinHours version, like 0.3.0. |
| Since install | Roughly how long ago WinHours was installed: that day, a week, a month, or more. |
| Windows | Windows 10 or 11, and the build number. |
| PC | The processor type (x64 or Arm), the memory size in steps (8 GB, 16 GB), the display scaling. |
| WinHours' own use | The memory and processor time WinHours itself used that day: one typical number each, and the processor time's average. |
| Why it cost that | Its busiest minutes, the processor time of each of its parts, the most memory and handles it held, the minutes its window, panel or a limit's card was open, it was paused or it watched a browser closely for a used-up limit, and how often it refreshed, read an address bar, looked at your other screen or worked out a finished day. Counts only. |
| Crashes | How many times WinHours crashed, and where: a place in the program's code, like crates/app/src/panel.rs:412, never what was on screen. |
| Updates | How many updates installed and how many failed. |
| Opens | How many times the panel, the window and Settings were opened, and how many pages were opened in the window. |
| Settings | The theme, what the tray icon shows, the away time (3, 5 or 10 minutes) and how long details are kept. |
| Features | How many daily limits were set, and how often a limit's card showed, closed something, gave 5 more minutes or was ignored; how many pauses, searches and exports. Counts only, never which app or site, what you searched or where a file went. |
| Errors | How many times the database failed, and how many times a browser's address bar could not be read. Counts only. |
It never includes an app, a site, a window title, a time you spent, a file name or your name. Each report carries a random number made on your PC, so we can count PCs; it isn't tied to you or your hardware. We keep reports, with only their date, for about a year.
What we never do
No accounts, no ads, and nothing is sold or shared. This website sets no cookies, has no trackers and loads nothing from any other site.
Deleting everything
- Settings, General, Delete history erases every app, site, title and time WinHours recorded, and empties the file, while keeping your settings and categories.
- Uninstalling (Windows Settings, Apps) asks whether to delete your history and settings too. Say yes and the
%LOCALAPPDATA%\WinHoursfolder goes. - Or quit WinHours and delete that folder yourself.
Questions
Write to winhours@imemyself.dev. If anything here changes, this page will say so first. WinHours is a sibling of WinPulse, made by imemyself.dev.
Last updated 12 October 2026