Looking for a Dayflow alternative on Mac
Keep Dayflow when you need to reconstruct the day from what was on the screen. A window title can hold a filename, and it cannot hold a button color, a crop, or whether YouTube was research or a detour. If you would rather not grant screen recording, Hina 0.6.0 stays in the menu bar and records the frontmost app, the duration, and input counts, without screenshots. Dayflow retells the work from the picture it captured. Hina lines up apps, titles you turn on, and a daily report, and it cannot replay the screen.
What Dayflow records
Dayflow 2.7.1, the GitHub release checked on 19 October 2026, is a native Mac app under the MIT license for macOS 14 or later. Open Dayflow.dmg from GitHub Releases and drag it into Applications, or run brew install --cask dayflow. The README tells you to grant Screen & System Audio Recording. The app's screen-capture description says it uses screen access to build the timeline, that recordings stay on the Mac, and that you can pause or delete them.
Capture is a screenshot timer written into HEVC segments. ScreenRecorder uses SCScreenshotManager, includes the cursor, and stores each frame under ~/Library/Application Support/Dayflow/. The default interval is 10 seconds, and the choices in the app are 1, 5, 10, 20, 30, and 60 seconds. The default height is 1080 pixels, with 720 as the other option. At 10 seconds and 1080p the app estimates about 10.3 MB of HEVC per recorded hour, and about 5 MB per hour at 720p. The homepage FAQ puts recording around 100 MB of RAM and under 1% CPU, with local model inference as the heavier load.
Pause Dayflow stops new frames for a set time, or until you click Resume. An app on the list subtitled Choose apps Dayflow should hide from screenshots is stored as a placeholder image, rather than the real frame. The product details page says a pause, a denied permission, or time away from the computer leaves a gap.
How a frame becomes a card
An activity card is what the model writes from a run of frames, a stretch with a description and a category matched against the category titles and descriptions you provide. The homepage FAQ uses YouTube for the split: the same app can be research or cat videos, and a total by app name cannot make that split. Cards are usually ready about 15 minutes after recording starts. The product details page, reviewed on 6 September 2026 against Dayflow 2.2.0, says to check a card against work you remember before you share it or bill from it. Export timeline and Export as Markdown turn a date range into text you edit yourself.
The day cut matches Hina. In Dayflow 2.7.1 a day runs from 4:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. the next day, and a week runs from Monday 4:00 a.m. to the next Monday 4:00 a.m. Work still open at 1:00 a.m. belongs to the previous day.
Where the model runs
Ollama or LM Studio keeps screenshot analysis on the Mac. The free plan is $0 a month, with local recordings, automatic capture, summaries, and your own keys. Pricing lists a Gemini, OpenAI, or Anthropic key. The README lists Gemini with your API key, and ChatGPT or Claude through local CLIs, with Codex CLI and Claude Code in the requirements. The homepage FAQ says those CLIs need a paid ChatGPT or Claude subscription. Those three pages name the cloud options differently, so use the Providers list in the app you installed.
Dayflow Pro is $20 a month. Check the annual offer in the app before you subscribe. The trial string is Try Dayflow Pro free for 7 days. The privacy policy says Pro screenshots are deleted after processing, timeline entries, summaries, and categories can be kept for sync, and Dayflow does not sell your data. Product details says that is the published policy, not a server audit. Cloud analysis receives selected screenshots, and the pricing page says the full recording is not received or kept. Local mode can still send anonymous analytics, launches, feature use, and crash reports, plus basic account information. The 2.7.1 switch Share crash reports and anonymous usage data stays on until you turn it off. Sparkle checks https://dayflow.so/appcast.xml every 3600 seconds. Info.plist asks for the microphone while you talk to Flow, for that conversation only, and for Automation to focus or reopen a terminal agent session.
What Hina 0.6.0 records instead
Hina 0.6.0 sits in the menu bar and asks for Accessibility, named Device Control and Data Access on macOS 27. Until you grant it, only app names are recorded, and the permission detail says Hina does not ask for screen recording. With access it records the frontmost app, duration, and input counts. The Trail counts key presses and mouse or trackpad clicks, not typed characters. Record window titles and page paths on the Privacy tab stays off until you turn it on, for page recall and project names, without reading page text. A stored URL keeps the scheme, host, and path, and drops the query and fragment. The “Camera” and “Microphone was in use” marks show the camera or the default input device running, without the picture or the sound.
One idle review asks when you return from an unclassified stretch. The choices are Meeting, Reading / thinking, Watching, and Away, and a failed save can be left as Away. Today's report opens the daily report. Copy puts the Markdown on the clipboard, and Export Markdown saves it as report- plus the date, with local git from folders you select. Read agent sessions, Read shell history, and AI usage metadata are on that same Privacy tab and stay off until you enable them. Sessions add your prompts, session time, directory, branch, and edit-tool paths, and leave out replies and tool output. Shell history adds the command and subcommand, not the arguments. AI usage reads model, project, and token counts from local Claude Code and Codex logs. The report note says this is not hours worked, a finished task, or a bill. Recording, search, charts, and reports run offline. Network access comes only from three clicks you make: the purchase page in the browser, license activation, and Check for Updates, with no activity records and no scheduled check. After the trial, recording continues and daily reports need a license.
Why the two days disagree
The first check is whether each app was recording. Dayflow without screen recording shows Screen recording access needed, and the recovery line is Turn on Screen Recording for Dayflow, then quit and reopen the app to finish. A pause, sleep, a lock, or a hidden app leaves a gap or a placeholder. Hina without Accessibility has app names only, and a stretch where Hina was quit is empty on the Trail. Neither history imports, and the Trail starts when Hina is recording.
Then compare the unit. Dayflow's hour is frames plus a card. Hina's hour is frontmost time, input counts, and titles you enabled. A YouTube-as-research card does not become that sentence in Hina. You get the browser, a duration, clicks, and, with page paths on, a path with the query removed. A Figma crop appears only if the window title already contained it. Hina's daily report keeps local commits from folders you chose and prompts you opted into. Dayflow 2.7.1 has a separate Agents tab that reads Codex and Claude Code session logs on the Mac and shows sessions, token usage, and estimated API cost, and its first launch downloads AgentPlayback, which needs Node.js and npm. The activity card itself remains a draft about the screen. The homepage calls Gemini and ChatGPT or Claude generally more detailed than local models, and Reprocess day generates the day again. The short recap at the top of Hina's report for yesterday is picked by a fixed rule, at most three original sentences from local commits, prompts and window records, with no model involved, and it stays in memory. Clear records on Privacy pauses recording. AI conversations, repositories, and exports stay.
When the picture is what you need
Stay with Dayflow when you need the picture later: a layout, a YouTube stretch described from the screen, or the README's Daily Standup of yesterday's highlights, today's priorities, and blockers. In Hina, the Previous arrow above the Trail steps back to yesterday, and the daily report separates commits, an opted-in prompt, and a named stretch. The button's place on the canvas is not in that report.
Use Hina when you do not want screen recording, and app time, optional titles, the idle answer, and a local-git report cover the question. The visual recap from screen content stays with Dayflow. The post on time tracking without screenshots covers how far filenames and page paths get you, and the post on choosing a Mac time tracker by how it records covers timers, cloud trackers, local window logs, and screen journals. Standup from yesterday's Trail and local commits is a different job from Dayflow's drafted cards.