6 Best Time Management Tools For Linux
Do you do the majority of your job on Linux? Having trouble managing your time? Consider looking into a time management tool to improve and track your productivity. There are many different time management tools for Linux. Each program does different things and serves different purposes. As a result, you might not know where to start. That’s where we come in! Here are the 8 best time management tools for better productivity on Linux!
1. Tomate
An excellent productivity method to use to get the most out of creative work (like development, writing, etc.) is the Pomodoro technique. It’s a method of time management where productivity is split up into 25 minute intervals, with 5 and 15 minute breaks in-between. Pomodoro is very popular in the Linux community, as many users are also programmers.
The best Pomodoro tool on the platform, by far is Tomate. It’s a simple GTK time tracking tool that, when running, can quickly notify the user when they should work and take a break. The app also tracks how long a user is productive in “Pomodoros.”
If you’re struggling to be productive while using your Linux PC, this app is one to check out.
Notable Features:
- Has an optional alarm plugin that enables Tomate to play a sound when a timer finishes.
- Lets users customize the Pomodoro timers, for a more custom productivity experience, rather than keeping it at 25, 5 and 15.
- Status icon plugin lets Tomate display the current timer in the system tray while running.
2. Gnome Pomodoro
Gnome Pomodoro is yet another productivity/time tracking app. Much like Tomate, it is straightforward in design. However, Gnome Pomodoro stands out on its own by bringing in a mode that effectively locks the screen when it’s time to take a break. The screen lock feature is excellent, and it helps keep Pomodoro technique newbies in line.
Though Gnome Pomodoro is best with the Gnome Desktop environment, it works just fine on any GTK desktop environment.
Notable Features:
- Customizable timers allow users to tweak the Pomodoro technique to their needs.
- Fullscreen notifications that lock everything during breaks, so that users follow the work, break, work method.
- Reminder notifications, so you never miss when a timer is up.
- Notifications feature has a “Lengthen it” button which makes increasing break time length effortless.
3. Hamster
The Pomodoro technique is a popular and effective way of working within the Linux community, but it’s not the only way to be productive. If you’re the type of person that prefers to schedule your entire workday, a great app to do it with is Hamster.
Hamster is a timeline tool for Linux that helps users keep track of how they’re spending time. The app isn’t the first timesheet application for Linux but remains one of the best. It has an easy to understand interface, works on nearly every Linux operating system (thanks to Python), and has handy features.
Notable Features:
- Easy to understand interface makes entering activities into the tracker very straightforward.
- Open source and easy to compile on nearly every Linux distribution, thanks to excellent documentation.
- The tagging system allows users to sort through activity timeline for specific entries easily.
- Productivity graph shows how many activities you complete during the week.
- The Hamster time tracking tool has an editable history feature, which lets users add earlier tasks to the timesheet.
- Hamster has an excellent category system to track tasks completed in groups.
- Timesheets can export as an HTML report for easy viewing.
- Yearly reports.
4. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is a proprietary Time Tracking app for Linux and other platforms. Overall, TimeCamp offers some of the same tracking features that many open source tools like KTimeTracker, GTimeLog, and Hamster offer, and if you’re a single user, this app is not the best solution. With all that in mind, if you need to track and manage time for productivity purposes, there’s nothing better.
Notable Features:
- TimeCamp offers a free version for individuals with excellent support for Ubuntu/Debian.
- Has a companion mobile app so that you’ll always have access to your timeline.
- Automatic tracking feature allows users to more easily log tasks, without needing to do everything by hand.
- Syncs across both mobile and various desktop apps on Mac, Linux, and Windows that are logged in.
- Paid version has productivity and team organizing features to help increase productivity even more.
- Built-in billing/invoice system.
- Visual tracking in TimeCamp means timesheets are much easier to read.
- Integrated time budgeting system shows users time spent versus time set aside for given tasks in the timesheet.
5. KTimeTracker
KTimeTracker is a basic time management tool for Linux. It’s part of the KDE family of applications and works best with Qt desktop environments like Plasma 5 and LXQt.
While KTimeTracker is very basic, it defies expectations by it’s excellent “pause detection” feature a unique set of configurable settings.
Notable Features:
- The “pause detection” feature can determine if a user is away from the computer. If it decides that the user is away, KTimeTracker will automatically stop tracking a task, until the user re-enables it.
- Has CSV exporting feature for timesheets so that users can easily share them via email or cloud storage.
- Comment feature lets users add notes on each completed task.
- Editable timeline history.
6. Gtimelog
Gtimelog is a time logging app for the Gnome desktop environment. It’s widely available on dozens of Linux distributions because it’s built with Pyton.
The app is quite basic but is perfect for those looking to keep track of time and tasks without dealing with fancy bells and whistles.
Notable Features:
- Simple command syntax makes logging tasks in a timesheet very efficient and quick.
- Integrated “Tasks” pane lets users let users lists tasks on the side.
- With the “Reports” feature, viewing a complete timesheet at the end of each workday is quick and painless.
- Gtimelog is available in the Python package system (Pip). Any Linux distribution can easily install the Gtimelog app as long as a recent version of the Python programming language is present.
