File Usage Monitor

Improving your workflow can simply mean knowing the exact time you spend on your activities. Setting up timers is one way to do it, but if your task involves handling multiple operations or files, you might need something else. For instance, File Usage Monitor is the type of application which keeps an eye on files you use.

First of all, you can go ahead and run the application from the moment download is done, because there’s no setup involved to make it work. More than that, you can run it on other computers directly from a USB flash drive, and this doesn’t affect stability of the target PC, because registry entries are not modified in the process.

The visual design wraps all features in a classic window frame, which doesn’t really pose any accommodation problems. A large area is used to display all loaded files in a table with headers for filename, status, and log time. You’re free to add any kind of files, which is either done through the browse dialog or a drag and drop operation.

Note that the application is mostly capable of monitoring the file in focus. On the other hand, it automatically switches to other ones on the list along with focus. There’s also a settings panel you can access to set the interval in seconds for which to stop logging if mouse interaction is not detected.

There’s no possibility to manually add time to files, to prevent you from cheating. When in use, it can be sent to the tray area so you can focus on the tasks at hand. Moreover, an option can be enabled to make the application run on startup, so that it’s ready by the time you reach the desktop.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that File Usage Monitor is a useful application you can use to get an idea of how well you perform your tasks, by simply counting the time spent inside each file you work on.