yLedger

A privacy-first menu bar work log for macOS.

yLedger lives in your menu bar and lets you capture what you're working on with a single click. Every entry is written to a plain JSON file on your own Mac. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is tracked, nothing leaves your computer.

Features

• Lives in the macOS menu bar — log a note without leaving your current window
• Organise entries into projects, with a default project for one-click logging
• Quick note plus optional details for longer context
• Per-project history with timestamps and friendly relative dates ("Today", "Yesterday")
• Edit or delete entries any time
• Custom Aurora dark theme — a dense, calm interface designed for quick glances
• Sandboxed, fully offline, no account required

Requirements

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
• Xcode 15 or later (only if building from source)

Install

yLedger is distributed exclusively through the Mac App Store.

Download yLedger on the Mac App Store

Usage

1. Click the yLedger icon in your menu bar (the clipboard pencil).
2. Pick a project from the dropdown — or set a default project once and skip this step forever.
3. Type your note, optionally add details, and hit Log.

Past entries appear underneath, grouped by project, so you can scroll back through your day without opening another app.

Where your data lives

yLedger stores everything in a single human-readable JSON file at:

~/Library/Application Support/yLedger/log.json

You can back it up, copy it between Macs, or open it in any text editor. It's your data, in a format you can read.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/tomvictor/yledger.git
cd yledger
open ylegder.xcodeproj

Then build and run the ylegder scheme in Xcode.

Tech stack

• Swift, SwiftUI, AppKit
• MenuBarExtra for the menu bar UI
• JSON file persistence — no databases, no third-party dependencies

Privacy

yLedger collects no data. It makes no network requests. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting SDK, no third-party service.

See PRIVACY.md for the full privacy policy.

Planned features

• Tagging and search across entries
• Daily and weekly summary view
• Export to Markdown and CSV
• Optional reminders to log at the end of a focus session

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. For larger changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change.

Support

For questions or bug reports, open an issue on GitHub or email mail@tomvictor.dev.

If you find yLedger useful, please star the repo.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.