Oh My Time 4 — User Guide

An automatic time tracker for Blender: real working time per file, per project and per day, acrossevery .blend file, crashes and computers.

Requirements & compatibility

Install

1. Download oh_my_time-4.0.1.zip. Don't unzip it.
2. In Blender open Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Get Extensions.
3. Click the ⌄ arrow in the top-right corner and choose Install from Disk…
4. Pick the zip. Tracking starts right away.

Updating from 1.x–3.x: remove the old Oh My Time in Preferences ▸ Add-ons first. The first time you open a filetracked by an old version, its stored total is imported, so your old numbers are not lost.Uninstalling: Preferences ▸ Get Extensions, find Oh My Time, ⌄ ▸ Uninstall. Your history folder stays on disk.

Where to find it

• Status bar (bottom-right of the Blender window): today's work time, e.g. 2h 03m today. Click it for the full panel.
• Properties ▸ Scene tab ▸ Oh My Time: the same panel.

Quick start

1. Just work. Oh My Time counts in the background.
2. Save your file. Its folder becomes its project, e.g. every file in …/Robot Ad/ counts towards Robot Ad.
3. Click the time in the status bar whenever you want to see where your hours went.
4. At the end of the job: Export Timesheet (CSV) for your invoice.

The panel

How time is counted

• Active time is what counts: mouse and keyboard work. A pause shorter than the idle limit (3 minutes by default) still counts, so thinking time is work time. After the limit the counter stops until you're back.
• Open time is simply how long Blender was open, for comparison.
• Rendering is counted separately, whether you watch or not.
• How activity is detected: on Windows from the system's input clock while a Blender window is in front. On macOS and Linux from your work inside Blender: edits, undo, saves and editor updates.

Projects

• By default a file's project is its folder name.
• Pick another project: click the project name ▸ choose one, or New / Rename…. Options: Every file in this folder (the whole folder and its subfolders follow) and Move past time too (time already recorded for this file moves with it).
• Save As keeps the project, so shot_v07.blend still adds up with shot_v06.blend.

Your data

• Nothing is written into your .blend files. The history lives in one folder:
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Blender Foundation\Blender\oh_my_time
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Blender/oh_my_time
• Linux: ~/.config/blender/oh_my_time
• Several computers: set the same synced folder (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, a NAS) as Data folder on each. Every computer writes its own file, so syncing never conflicts, and totals combine automatically.
• Crash-proof: the running session is saved every 30 seconds and recovered after a crash or power cut.

Timesheet export

Export Timesheet (CSV) saves one row per session: date, start, end, project, file, active minutes, open minutesand render minutes. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or Numbers. Filter by project and sum theactive column for an invoice.

Pomodoro

Focus starts a focus block, Break a short break. When the time is up, a small popup tells you, and thestatus bar shows the countdown meanwhile. Lengths are set in the preferences (25 / 5 / 15 minutes by default).

Settings

Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Oh My Time:

Troubleshooting

More tools by Doctor Blender

• Oh My Gear 2 - true involute gears, trains, worms and chains from a curve
• Oh My Graph - channel filters, stagger, retime and loops for the Graph Editor
• Oh My Lights - every light of the scene in one sidebar list
• Simple Shutdown - save the render, then turn the computer off

Everything on Superhive and Gumroad.