SqwarkSelf vs RescueTime
RescueTime tells you where your time went, on every device, and can block the distracting parts. SqwarkSelf keeps one Mac on the one thing you said you’d do.
RescueTime is an automatic time tracker. It logs the window you’re in and how long you stay, sorts what you do into five levels from Focus Work to Distracting, and turns that into reports. Its Focus Sessions block whatever is rated Personal or Distracting, on your computer and your phone at once.
SqwarkSelf is smaller and narrower. It doesn’t score your day afterwards. It steps in while you work, when a window you ruled out comes to the front, with the sentence you typed.
Side by side
| SqwarkSelf | RescueTime | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Mac only, macOS 14 or later. | Mac (macOS 11 or newer), Windows, iPhone and iPad, Android, and a web dashboard. |
| When you drift | Only the off-task window goes dark, with your own words on it and a ten-second ring. Then the app is hidden, or the browser goes back to a tab you were working in. | During a Focus Session, a distracting site is replaced by a block page. For an app, the block page opens in a browser window and the app stays open behind it. |
| Can you get past it? | Always. On a watch, “This is work” lets it through for the rest of the watch, and your call is logged; under a house rule, “Pause for 10 min”. There is no lock. | Yes, if “Allow Unblocking” is on: you can click through. Turn it off and there’s no way past the block page until the session ends. |
| What counts as a distraction | The kinds of thing you ruled out: social, chat, video, news, shopping. Built-in rules and your own entries settle the obvious cases (ad managers count as work). With your own Jev key, unknown sites and either-way ones like YouTube are checked against what you said you’d do. | Whatever is rated Personal or Distracting in its categories, which you can re-rate, with exceptions you add. One level blocks communication apps too. |
| Schedules and all-day rules | House rules: any of those five can be blocked all day, with a 10, 30 or 60-minute pause. No schedules. | Sessions can start from calendar events, from alerts (say, after 30 minutes of distracting time), or in suggested Focus Zones. |
| Tracking and history | Logs the app, window title and site. Shows today: where the time went, the top time sinks, focus kept. | The active window and time spent, sites trimmed to the site name, document names on paid plans. Reports on every plan: unlimited history on paid plans, two weeks on the free Lite plan. |
| Account | None. | Required. |
| Where your data lives | In local files on your Mac. Nothing it records is sent to us. With your own Jev key, the cases the rules can’t settle go to TypeSafe. | Sent to RescueTime’s servers every few minutes. It says it never collects keystrokes, form input or screenshots, and query strings are discarded. |
| Teams | None. | Yes: team plans and team reports. Admins can’t force blocking on a team. |
| Price | US$49 once, for up to 3 Macs (not on sale yet). 14 days free; after that, logging and the Today view stay free. | Solo Focus is $7 a month on the annual plan ($84), or $9 monthly; other plans cost more. All paid plans have a 14-day free trial. The free Lite plan tracks, without blocking. |
What RescueTime does better
- Every device: Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android. A Focus Session blocks on all of them at once, phone included.
- History: reports, weekly summaries, goals and alerts, with unlimited history on paid plans.
- A strict setting with no way past the block page until the session ends.
- Sessions that start themselves, from your calendar or when distracting time piles up.
- Timesheets for billable work, team reports, calendar and Slack integrations, and an API.
- A free plan for tracking.
- Older Macs: it supports macOS 11 or newer.
Where SqwarkSelf is different
- Its card hands back the sentence you typed, and with your own Jev key, sites that can go either way, like YouTube, are checked against what you said you’d do, rather than against a rating of the site.
- Only the window you drifted into goes dark, with the card in its middle. No new window opens.
- No account. The log stays in files on your Mac; RescueTime is a cloud account by design.
- A one-time price instead of a subscription.
- In common: both strip query strings from addresses, and neither records your keystrokes.
Choose RescueTime if…
- you want to see where your time goes across weeks, on every device
- your phone is your worst distraction
- you want a block you can make impossible to click past
- you use Windows, or need team reports
Choose SqwarkSelf if…
- you want to be stopped in the moment, on the Mac, by your own stated plan
- you’d rather your day wasn’t in anyone’s cloud
- you’d rather pay once
What SqwarkSelf doesn’t do
- Mac only: no iPhone, no Android, no Windows.
- No hard lock. On a watch you can always say “this is work”; a house rule can always be paused.
- No schedules, and no reports beyond today.
- No team features.
- It’s new: a first version, from a very small company.
What we checked
Everything in RescueTime’s column comes from these pages, read on 21 September 2026. If something has changed since, their page is right and this one is out of date.
- rescuetime.com: What RescueTime is; platforms; blocking
- rescuetime.com/pricing: Prices and trial
- help.rescuetime.com/article/56-what-operating-systems-does-rescuetime-support: Supported systems
- help.rescuetime.com/article/81-what-are-the-differences-between-premium-and-lite-accounts: The free Lite plan
- help.rescuetime.com/article/297-how-to-start-a-focus-session: Blocking levels, block page, strict blocking, all devices
- help.rescuetime.com/article/377-focus-settings: Allow Unblocking, exceptions
- help.rescuetime.com/article/245-how-rescuetime-works: Active-window tracking; data sent to its servers
- rescuetime.com/rtx/privacy: What it collects; query strings discarded
- rescuetime.com/features/focus/team: Team features; no team-wide blocking
RescueTime is a trademark of its owner. SqwarkSelf isn’t affiliated with it, and this page uses no logos or screenshots of theirs.
