Meet the RescueTime Assistant
The RescueTime Assistant is the desktop app that lives in your menu bar (macOS) or system tray (Windows).
It's the real-time face of RescueTime: tracking your day, surfacing insights, and giving you quick access to Focus Sessions, offline activity, and your daily progress.
The Assistant must be running for RescueTime to track your activity and populate your reports.
Focus Work goal and schedule
The top of the Assistant shows your current work status and daily Focus Work goal. It displays when your workday ends (based on your work schedule), a progress bar that fills as you accumulate Focus Work time, and how much time remains to meet your goal.
Hovering over the progress bar reveals two additional details: how much Focus Work you've logged so far today and how many meetings you have scheduled. The meeting count comes from your connected calendar, if you have one.
The goal shown in the header is your starred goal. By default, this is your Focus Work goal from your work schedule settings, but you can replace it by starring any goal from the Goals & Alerts page.
The alert feed
The main area of the Assistant is a chronological feed of alerts: updates about your progress, schedule, distractions, and goals. Most alerts also fire as desktop notifications (if you've enabled them in your OS notification settings) and then persist in the feed for a limited time before expiring.
Pinned alerts appear above the feed in a yellow bar when they're active: these are time-sensitive and action-oriented, like an upcoming meeting or an active Focus Zone. See Alert types below for a full breakdown of what each alert means.
Settings menu
Click the gear icon on the Assistant to open the settings menu. It contains:
Quit RescueTime
Closes the app. You will need to relaunch it manually from your applications.
Activities
Opens the Activities page on the RescueTime website.
Settings
Opens a local settings panel with three sub-sections: General (app version, check for updates, troubleshooting diagnostics), Account Settings (links to your web account settings), and Network/Proxy (for troubleshooting: don't change without contacting support).
Community
Opens the RescueTime Community forum.
Help
Opens a form to contact support.
The Assistant operates in five modes. The header and feed adapt to reflect what's happening in each one.
Work
The default mode during your scheduled work hours. RescueTime tracks all your activity (except ignored activities), and time spent on Focus Work counts toward your daily goal. Work mode starts automatically based on your work schedule, which was set during onboarding and can be edited from Account Settings > Work Schedule.
Meeting
Activates automatically when a meeting starts on your connected calendar. A pinned alert appears in the Assistant with the meeting name, and a Join Meeting button if there's a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams link in the event.
If a meeting is canceled or changed, you can edit the event in your connected calendar and RescueTime will update your reports and Timesheets Timeline. If your meeting ends early, click This meeting ended early to return to Work mode and have your remaining time tracked correctly. Connect your calendar under Account Settings → Calendar Integrations.
Focus SessionSolo Focus & Solo+
Active while a Focus Session is running. Personal and Distracting websites and apps are blocked. The Assistant shows a countdown for the session duration. When the session ends, it displays a summary of what you accomplished.
To cancel a session early, click Cancel session in the Assistant.
Recharge Time
Activates automatically at the end of your scheduled workday. RescueTime continues tracking, but activity no longer counts toward your Focus Work Goal. This lets your reports show a clean split between work and non-work activity: you'll be able to filter your reports by "All time" or "Work hours".
If you keep working and want that time to count, click Back to Work on the Assistant. Clicking Overview takes you to your Dashboard.
Pause
Activated manually with the On/Paused toggle. RescueTime stops recording entirely. Toggling to Paused takes effect immediately, whether or not you've selected a duration.
Paused time is permanently lost and cannot be recovered.
Alerts are how the Assistant communicates with you throughout the day. They appear under your current goal and persist in the Assistant feed for a limited time. There are two types: feed alerts (chronological, time-limited) and pinned alerts (displayed prominently above the feed while active).
Feed alerts
Morning Forecast
Appears at the start of your workday. Shows your scheduled meetings, your Focus Zones for the day (the best windows to do focused work), and whether you're realistically on track to hit your Focus Work goal given your available time.
Focus Work Goal Alert
Fires when you've hit your daily Focus Work Goal and lets you know how much time you have left in your workday.
Goal Alert
Fires when you reach any custom goal you've set up in Goals & Alerts. Also notes your weekly progress toward the same goal.
Distraction Alert
Appears when you've switched between productive and unproductive activities too frequently during the day: a signal that context-switching and distractions are fragmenting your focus. This is a prompt to consider starting a Focus Session.
Balance Alert
Appears when you're working outside your scheduled hours: during a break or after your workday ends. A reminder that your current time isn't counting toward your Focus Work goal unless you click Back to Work.
End of Day Report
A summary of your day: total Focus Work, how often you shifted to distracting activities, and your top activities in both productive and distracting categories. Delivered at the time you've set in your work schedule settings.
Weekly Review
Delivered at the end of your work week. Shows your total work for the week, best times to focus, Focus Work total, distraction count, and meetings logged.
Pinned alerts
Pinned alerts appear in yellow above the feed while they're active. They're time-sensitive and typically ask you to do something.
Join Meeting
Appears when a calendar event is about to start or is currently active. If the event contains a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams link, a Join Meeting button takes you directly there. Dismisses when the meeting ends.
Focus Zone
Appears when you're in an identified Focus Zone: a window of time with no meetings that's well-suited for deep work. Includes a Start a Focus Session button to immediately put that window to use. See Focus Zones below for full details.
Focus Zones
A Focus Zone is a window of time that RescueTime identifies as ideal for deep, focused work. They appear in your Morning Forecast as Focus Opportunities, and when one arrives, you get a pinned alert in the Assistant.
How Focus Zones are calculated
RescueTime looks at two inputs:
Connected calendar
Any gap of at least one hour between meetings during your workday can become a Focus Zone. You can see up to three per day.
Past work patterns
If you don't have a connected calendar or have no meetings, RescueTime uses your previous week of activity to find the times when you've historically done the most Focus Work.
Optional blocking during Focus Zones
If enabled in Account Settings → Focus Settings, Personal and Distracting websites are automatically blocked when a Focus Zone begins, without needing to manually start a Focus Session. When a blocked site is accessed during a Focus Zone, you're shown three options: start a Focus Session, continue to the site anyway, or turn off blocking for that zone.
💡 A Focus Zone is a suggestion, not a demand. Dismiss the alert or click through the block page at any time. Focus Zone alerts can be disabled in your account settings.