Input Stats

A macOS menu bar app that tracks your daily keyboard and mouse/trackpad activity.

A fork of Typing Stats by Guillermo Rauch, extended with mouse/trackpad tracking (clicks, scroll, pointer movement) and a high-resolution timeseries drilldown (down to 5-second blocks).

Maintained by mewc. For more, see mewc.info and drummerduck.com.

Privacy: raw five-second input buckets stay local on your Mac. If you opt in with Google, numeric one-minute summaries and daily totals sync to your private account. Keystrokes themselves are never recorded. The app never captures characters, key codes, window titles, URLs, clipboard contents, screenshots, or raw input events. Full privacy details.

Install

Homebrew (recommended — clears the Gatekeeper quarantine for you):

brew install --cask mewc/tap/input-stats

Direct download

1. Download InputStats.zip from the latest release and unzip it.
2. Move Input Stats.app to /Applications.
3. First launch is blocked by Gatekeeper (self-signed, not notarized). Either right-click the app → Open and confirm, or run:

   xattr -cr "/Applications/Input Stats.app"

Either way, grant Accessibility permission when prompted. The app only ever counts — keystrokes are never recorded.

Features

• Live keystroke counter in the menu bar
• Compact three-significant-digit menu-bar totals, with the full number shown while the menu is open
• Daily / weekly / monthly keystroke stats, multi-device sync via iCloud
• Per-app keystroke breakdown
• Mouse & trackpad tracking — clicks, scroll, and pointer-movement distance
• History window with Keys / Mouse tabs, each with Daily (stacked bars) and Timeseries (lines) views
• Timeseries drilldown — span picker (1h–30d) with resolution down to 5s blocks, gated so wide windows can't render a punishing number of points
• Start at login
• Free Google login for account-backed sync and a private web dashboard with per-app analytics
• Optional public profile page (off by default) with a live share card — Share Public Profile… in the menu
• De-identified community analytics using coarse app categories and a 20-account publication threshold

Permissions

Accessibility permission is required to count input. You'll be prompted on first launch, or grant it in:

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility

Build from source

./build.sh             # dev build (Input Stats (Dev).app)
./build.sh --release   # production build (Input Stats.app)
./dev.sh               # dev build, install + relaunch (yellow icon, "(dev)" suffix)
./dev.sh --run         # dev build, run in foreground to see logs
./test.sh              # sync/repair and count-format regression tests
./repair-data.sh       # dry-run repair of v0.1.8 carried daily totals
./repair-data.sh --apply # back up the iCloud JSON, then apply the repairs

The dev and release builds are kept apart on purpose: the dev app registers the inputstats-dev:// URL scheme and talks to a local cloud at http://localhost:3000, while the release app registers inputstats:// and talks to production. A "Pair this Mac" button on the production dashboard can therefore never open the dev app (or vice versa). Point either build somewhere else with defaults write com.mewc.input-stats[.dev] cloudBaseURL https://….

repair-data.sh scans every device in the merged history. It only changes rows matching the exact carried-count fingerprint, prints each proposed correction, and leaves the source untouched unless --apply is supplied. Use --file PATH to inspect a copied or alternate sync JSON file.

When account sync is enabled, the app automatically backfills up to 30 days of active one-minute summaries in retry-safe batches. Older daily key/app history remains available through the existing daily sync data, so enabling the dashboard does not throw away prior history. You can also preview and apply the carried-count repair from Dashboard → Data, where every applied repair creates a 30-day restore point first.

Releasing

Push a tag to publish a download-only GitHub release (CI builds, zips, and attaches the app):

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

Credits

• Guillermo Rauch — original Typing Stats
• Ghoshan Jaganathamani — per-app analytics

Uninstall

rm -rf "/Applications/Input Stats.app"
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/TypingStats