The menu-bar icon and pausing

WorkMonitor's menu-bar icon stays visible the whole time you're tracked, opens a live panel showing what's happening, and lets you pause or resume capture in a click.

Who this is for

Anyone with WorkMonitor installed and signed in on their Mac. This is the everyday surface for a person being tracked, not an admin screen. Every signed-in member sees the same icon and panel on their own machine.

Before you start

WorkMonitor has to already be signed in and past setup on this Mac. Until then, clicking the icon opens the sign-in and permissions flow instead of the live panel. See Install on a Mac.

What you'll see

The icon itself is always the same WorkMonitor mark. It doesn't change shape to reflect status. What changes is the tooltip and the menus around it.

• Hover the icon: the tooltip reads "WorkMonitor: " followed by its current status: Starting…, Not enrolled, Tracking active, Paused, Offline, buffering, or Error: <message>.
• Left-click opens the "island" (WorkMonitor's main live panel):
• A header with a pulsing dot, the WorkMonitor name, and a state pill reading Live, Paused, Offline, Starting, Error, or Off, plus a help (?) button and a settings (gear) button.
• Below that, the task you're on (or "No task yet"), with a pencil to rename it or start a new one. The field prompts "What are you working on?" for a first task, or "Switch task…" after, with a Start or Switch button next to it.
• Two stats: Active today (hours and minutes) and Focus (a percentage, shown as ", " before there's any data for the day).
• Two controls: Pause / Resume, and a small square Stop button. It carries no text label, but hovering shows "Stop & clock out".
• A footer reading "Uploads over TLS" and the app version.
• Right-click opens a compact menu instead: a fixed line reading "You are monitored by WorkMonitor", your current status plus a last-sync line ("Last sync … ago" or "Not synced yet"), Settings… (or Finish setup… before onboarding completes), How it works…, a Permissions section listing Screen Recording and Accessibility each marked granted or grant…, Pause / Resume, Start at login (only shown once available), and Quit WorkMonitor.

What happens next

Selecting Pause (from the island or the right-click menu) stops capture without ending your session: the task timer freezes and nothing is recorded while you're paused. Selecting Resume picks it back up from where it stopped.

Stop goes further: it pauses and clocks you out in one step, closing your current task and resetting the timer to zero. Starting a new task afterwards resumes tracking automatically. Either way, WorkMonitor keeps running in the menu bar. Quitting it is a separate, deliberate action, from the right-click menu's Quit WorkMonitor.

If it doesn't work

• If clicking the icon opens Settings… instead of the live panel, setup isn't finished yet. Finish signing in and granting permissions first (see Install on a Mac).
• If the status reads Error: <message>, WorkMonitor hit a problem reaching the server. It keeps buffering what it can and recovers on its own once the problem clears.
• If you rename or switch a task and see "Couldn't save. Check your connection." under the field, the change didn't save. Try again once you're back online.
• Stop is greyed out when there's no task running and you're already paused. There's nothing to stop yet.
• A permission you skipped earlier can be granted any time from the right-click menu's Permissions section. Select the row that reads "grant…".

Related

• Install on a Mac
• Your devices