Time Tracking with Insightful

Studies that pay by the hour track your time with Insightful. Install the app, pick your project, and press play while you work. You start and stop the timer yourself.

Step 1: Download the desktop application

Your Insightful account is created when you reach the Set up your time tracker step of a study, and we add you to the study's project at the same time. It can take a few minutes. You do not need to wait for the invitation email from Insightful, or accept it.

Sign in at app.insightful.io (see Step 2 for which email to use), then download the app for your operating system from app.insightful.io/#/token/download. The download page only opens once you are signed in. When the app is installed, click I'm set up on the study's step.

If you already used Insightful on an earlier study, there is no new invitation: the step reads Track this project in Insightful, and Open Insightful takes you straight to the app.

Windows 10 or later, macOS 11 or later, Linux in beta.

On macOS, allow every permission the installer asks for. The app cannot record your time without them.

Step 2: Sign in

Use the email address you signed up to Terac with: the email on your Terac account when you first reached a time-tracker step. That is the only address Insightful knows you by, and changing your Terac email later does not change it.

Never set a password? Click Forgot Password? and enter that same address.

Screen recording permission

The app needs permission to capture your screen. Without it the timer still runs and your hours still count, so nothing looks broken, but the screenshots that back those hours up are missing, and most hourly studies expect them. The app takes screenshots only while your timer is running. It does not record video, and it takes no screenshots while you are idle.

macOS

This is a Mac permission, not a setting inside the app.

1. Apple menu, then System Settings
2. Privacy & Security
3. Screen & System Audio Recording
4. Turn on Workpuls. Insightful ships the app under that name, so that is what you are looking for.
5. If it is not in the list, click + and add Workpuls.app from Applications
6. Quit the app completely and open it again. The permission does not take effect until you do.

Workpuls needs a second permission alongside this one, and Apple changed it in macOS 27. On macOS 26 and earlier, turn Workpuls on under Accessibility. On macOS 27 and later, look for Device Control & Data Access instead: same Privacy & Security list, same app name.

If you granted Accessibility by hand before updating to macOS 27, it carries over. You may see a one-time notification confirming it, and there is nothing for you to do.

Windows

Nothing to grant by hand. If screenshots are still missing, your antivirus or a privacy tool is blocking the app, so allow Workpuls there. On a work laptop your employer's software can block screen capture outright, and in that case you will need a personal machine for study work.

Confirm it worked

Press play on your task, work for a few minutes, then open Open Dashboard at the bottom of the app window. If you can see recent screenshots, it is working. If the timer is counting but nothing appears after a full session, the permission is usually still missing. Some projects switch screenshots off, and on those none appear even with the permission on.

Step 3: Pick your project

Your projects are the first thing the app shows, under Assigned Projects. Open the one you are working on.

Step 4: Start the timer

Press play on the task you are working on. Press it again to stop.

Time counts only while the timer runs, and only inside the study's project. Nothing is recorded before you press play or after you stop.

How tracked time becomes payment

Only tracked hours are paid, and they are reviewed before they are paid rather than approved automatically. Each project pays on its own schedule, shown on its Payout tab, and some projects pay only for time spent on the apps and sites the work requires. How payable hours work on the opportunity's Tracked hours tab shows which of your time is paid. See Project-Based Work.

We look at tracked time alongside the work you produced. If a session shows hours with no work behind them, we may ask you about it before paying it. Honest mistakes happen, and we would rather hear about them from you than find them ourselves.

In practice:

• Start the timer when you begin and stop it when you finish.
• Do not leave it running while you are away from the work.
• If you forget to stop it, tell us the same day and we will correct it.

Leaving the timer running while you are not working is treated as a quality issue rather than a payment dispute. See Account Standing.

Invitations and signing in

Projects and tracking

Devices and connection