The Assistant

Assistant Header
Assistant Body
Assistant Footer
On/Paused
Focus
Assistant Settings

The RescueTime Assistant is your digital wellness coach, accessible on your desktop's menubar, taskbar, or system tray. Your Assistant will help you through your workday providing you with your daily work progress, goals, reports, Focus features, and so much more to come.

PLEASE NOTE: You will need to download your Assistant in order for your Reports on the website to be collected accurately.

Assistant Header

The top portion of the Assistant provides some quick, at-a-glance information about your workday. This part of the Assistant changes in appearance depending on what mode it is in. There are five different modes: work mode, meeting mode, Focus Sessions, Recharge Time, and pause.

The following images and content refer to the Assistant in work mode, RescueTime's default tracking, and reporting mode. During this time, the app is tracking and reporting on all of your computer activities.

You can learn more about the other modes here.

At the top of the Assistant header, RescueTime lets you know when your workday/session ends, as indicated by your work schedule. Beneath this is a progress bar that shows your progress of your daily Focus Work goal: the amount of time you have spent on computer activities scored as Focus Work. The Assistant header has a hover state that displays when you mouse over the Focus Work goal progress bar. This hover state reveals 2 quick information blocks:

Additional information about your Focus Work progress
Total daily meeting time

Assistant Body

Most of the Assistant window is dedicated to a feed with daily focus/work updates called Alerts. Alerts typically appear as notifications on your desktop (as long as you have enabled notifications for RescueTime in your operating system), and most will then appear in your Assistant's Alert feed. Each Alert type has a different lifespan and will disappear after a few hours to a few days.
Learn more about Alerts here.

Assistant Footer

The bottom of the Assistant has controls for RescueTime's two modes that you turn on manually: pause and Focus Session*.

On/Paused

In the lower-left of the Assistant is an "on/paused" toggle that allows you to pause RescueTime's tracking and reporting for a set amount of time. Click on the toggle and choose either a length of time or enter a time/date for when RescueTime will pause.

During pause mode, RescueTime does not report your computer activities. Toggling Paused will start pausing the recording regardless of whether or not you choose the length of time to pause.

PLEASE NOTE: It's important to keep in mind that anything you do on your computer during pause mode cannot be recovered in our records.

Offline Work

You can add offline work, work done away from your computer, to count toward your Focus Work, Other Work, or Meetings. Just fill out a simple form and you're on your way to making all your work time count. You can find more details about offline work here.

Focus*

In the lower right of the Assistant is a Focus button. Clicking on this button will take you to optional Focus Session prep + warmups, and then off you go. You'll be able to enter in what you'll be working on during a Focus Session, choose your focus time length, block level, Spotify playlist and join other Focus Buddies through Workfrom. During a Focus Session websites and desktop apps scored as Personal Activities in your Activities page will be blocked.

You can learn more about Focus Sessions here.

Assistant Settings

The Assistant Settings menu is accessed by clicking the gear icon on the upper right corner of the Assistant. This menu provides quick access to certain settings and reports on the web app, as well as help options.

Always on Top: this is currently available on Mac only. When enabled or check marked and separated from the RescueTime icon, your Assistant will always remain open on your desktop.

* RescueTime Premium features only