KeyCounter

If you spend a lot of time working on the computer, you might be interested in becoming more disciplined, especially when it comes to important projects. This means that you should get any distractions out of the way.

There are many types of software products to help you in this regard, and one of them is KeyCounter. It's a pretty basic Windows application designed to monitor the times when you are active on the computer. It cannot actually track the activity you're conducting on the workstation but only monitor time.

The software program doesn't need installation since it's wrapped in a portable package. You can unzip the downloaded archive and double-click the .exe to launch the tool right away. KeyCounter creates an icon in the systray menu at startup, silently monitoring your activity time, depending on the times when you press keys on the keyboard, without interrupting you with any popup messages.

Double-clicking the tray icon brings up the main app window, where you can check out a graph with the uptime of the current day as well as find out the exact start and end time of each interval of activity.

Right-clicking the systray icon opens a menu, where you can also view the history of all days when KeyCounter was used to keep track of your PC activity. Unfortunately, there are no options implemented for exporting any of this data to file.

KeyCounter is a pretty old application that hasn't received updates for a long time. In fact, the software project doesn't seem to be in development anymore. Nevertheless, we tested it on the newest Windows edition and it worked flawlessly. We haven't experienced any compatibility issues. Also, as expected, the tool had minimal impact on system performance.

All aspects considered, KeyCounter may be a simplistic application but it can be a helpful ally to keep you focused on work by monitoring time spent on the PC.