Privacy
Time tracking without screenshots, and without surveillance
Most of this category grew out of employee monitoring, so most of it is built to watch people. Stunda measures work. The difference shows up in what the code is capable of, not in what the marketing promises.
In short
Privacy-first time tracking measures how much work happened without recording what the work was. Stunda counts keystrokes and clicks without capturing which keys, keeps screenshots off unless you switch them on, and strips query strings and fragments from browser URLs before anything is stored. It never records screen video, webcam, clipboard or keystroke content.
- Not content
- Counts
- Screenshots, off by default
- Opt-in
- URL query strings
- Stripped
- Webcam or screen video
- Never
The difference between a promise and a property
Every tracker in this category has a privacy page. What separates them is whether the privacy is a policy that could be revised in a release, or a property of how the thing is built.
Stunda counts your keystrokes by asking the operating system for a running total of input events and keeping the difference. That call returns a number. It does not return which keys, it cannot be made to return which keys, and there is no configuration in which it starts returning which keys. On Windows the same result is reached by sampling key state rather than installing a low-level keyboard hook, which is the mechanism a keylogger uses and which we deliberately do not use.
That is a different kind of assurance from "we promise not to look".
What is collected
- Counts of keystrokes and mouse clicks
- A number of events per interval. Used to separate an hour of work from an hour of an open window. Never the characters, never the sequence, never the target.
- The name of the frontmost application
- What produces the per-app breakdown. Sampled every few seconds while you are working.
- Window titles and browser hosts, if you allow it
- Optional, behind an explicit operating system permission you grant and can revoke. It is what turns an app name into a project. Query strings and fragments are removed before storage, so search terms, session tokens, reset links and document ids are not received in the first place.
- Idle time
- How long since the last input. Used to split idle from active, and to stop billing a lunch break.
What is never collected
Not "collected and discarded". Not captured.
- What you typed
- No keystroke content, in any mode, on any plan, at any permission level.
- Screen recordings
- There is no screen video capture in the product.
- Webcam
- The app does not request camera access and has no code path that would use it.
- Clipboard contents
- Not read.
- Your browsing, beyond the host and path
- And only when you have granted the optional permission that reads window information at all.
Screenshots exist, and they are off
Screenshots are a real feature, because some agencies genuinely need them for a client contract, and pretending otherwise would just mean those teams use something worse.
They are off by default, they require an explicit operating system permission that the app only requests from a deliberate action in settings, and turning them on is a decision somebody makes rather than a default somebody inherits. If you never touch that setting, no image of your screen is ever captured.
For teams: visibility without a camera
The reason surveillance tooling is popular with managers is that it answers a real question badly. The question is whether the work is getting done and where the capacity is going. Screenshots answer it by making everyone perform being at their desk.
Aggregate hours by project, utilisation, and where a week actually went answer it better, and they do it without anyone having to feel watched. Roles control who can see whose time, and "can view reports" defaults to off rather than on, because the default matters more than the setting.
Questions
Does Stunda take screenshots?
Only if you turn them on. They are off by default, and enabling them requires granting an operating system permission from a deliberate action in settings. Leave it alone and no image of your screen is ever captured.
Does Stunda record what I type?
No. It counts input events. On macOS the system call it uses returns a running total and nothing else; on Windows it samples key state rather than installing a keyboard hook. Neither mechanism has access to the content.
What does it store about the websites I visit?
If you have granted the optional window-inspection permission, the host and the path. Query strings and fragments are stripped before storage, because they carry search terms, session tokens and document ids that a timesheet has no business holding.
Is this a good alternative to employee monitoring software?
It is deliberately not employee monitoring software. It gives a team aggregate hours, project breakdowns and utilisation without screenshots, keystroke content or activity-level policing. If a client contract requires screenshots, the feature exists and is opt-in.
Can I delete or export my data?
Yes to both, at any time. Time entries and sessions export to CSV, invoices to PDF, and account deletion removes the data.
Who can see my time in a team workspace?
Controlled by role, and the permission to view other people's time is off by default rather than granted to everyone with an account.