Tidst vs Memtime

The main difference is what gets remembered

Imagine you spend 45 minutes writing a proposal.

With Memtime, the evidence is the shape of your computer use: time in a document, time in a browser, time in email. The timeline helps you reconstruct what that block was about.

With Tidst, the evidence is a task called Write proposal for Marta Okonkwo, ticked off in Todoist or Asana. Tidst brings that into The Queue, where you decide the duration before logging it.

Memtime answers "what was happening on my computer?" Tidst answers "what work did I finish or have scheduled?"

How Memtime works

Memtime is a desktop application for Mac, Windows and Linux that records computer activity in the background: programs, documents, files, browser tabs, calls and meetings. You review that timeline afterwards and turn the relevant activity into time entries.

It has no timer, and that is deliberate: their own argument is that start/stop timers interrupt work and get forgotten. Memtime states that tracking data is stored exclusively on the user's device and never on a server, which is a meaningful difference from employee-monitoring products that report to a manager.

It also carries a large catalogue of project-software and phone-system integrations, available from the Connect plan upwards, and supports teams up to enterprise size.

How Tidst works

Tidst is a web application. It does not record computer activity. The Queue starts with finished tasks from the Asana, ClickUp, Google Tasks, monday.com, Notion, Todoist or Trello projects you connect, and relevant Google Calendar or Outlook meetings. For work that leaves neither signal, there is a timer and manual entries.

It is less interested in reconstructing every minute at your computer, and more interested in helping you remember the pieces of work that may belong on a timesheet.

It does not see all offline work, and does not claim to. A spontaneous conversation with no task, meeting or timer still has to be added by hand.

Task tools are where they diverge most

Tidst was built around the task tools freelancers already plan in. Finished tasks from the projects and boards you choose become Queue items. That is the central workflow.

Memtime connects to project tools too, for a different job. On its Connect plan it syncs projects and tasks in from tools like Asana and ClickUp and sends finished time entries back, so you can assign your desktop timeline to the right task. Todoist, Notion and Google Tasks are not in its catalogue.

So if a task list is where you already keep track of client work, Tidst starts from it. If you would rather tracking did not depend on a task manager at all, that is a point in Memtime's favour.

Detail versus simplicity

A detailed timeline is genuinely useful when you do not remember how the day unfolded: you can see applications, tabs, documents and activity periods. That is more information than Tidst collects.

Tidst starts from higher-level signals instead. A task called Prepare August report is already much closer to a billable description than a timeline of browser tabs. The trade-off is that Tidst cannot reconstruct the activity behind it.

Which fits fragmented freelance work?

It depends which sentence sounds more like your problem.

"I cannot remember what I was doing between 10:12 and 10:47."

Memtime is built for that.

"I finished six small client tasks today and I will forget half of them by Friday."

Tidst is built around that.

One remembers activity. The other remembers work signals.