How do I install and update the agent on a Mac?

On a Mac the agent comes from the Mac App Store. There is nothing to unpack and nothing to drag into your Applications folder: the store installs it, and the store is also what brings you every version after this one.

What your Mac needs

• macOS 14 Sonoma or newer. That is the floor for the App Store version.
• Either kind of Mac. Apple silicon and Intel are both supported, and the store hands your machine the right build without asking you.
• A Worktivity account. You can sign up from the app itself, but joining or creating an organization happens in the web app, and the app points you there if your account belongs to none.

Install it

Open Worktivity Desktop on the Mac App Store and install it from there. The same button is the first one on the download page. The app is signed and sandboxed, so macOS raises none of the warnings that a file downloaded from a website can raise.

If your Mac is on macOS 12 or 13

The App Store version will not install there. For those Macs the previous agent is kept on the download page as a .dmg, listed underneath the store button. It is a different, older app rather than an older copy of this one, and what each of them can do is compared in which desktop app should I install.

The first time you open it

Worktivity has no Dock icon. It opens a small window and puts an icon in the menu bar along the top of your screen, and that icon is how you bring the window back after you close it.

1. Open Worktivity from Launchpad or from your Applications folder.
2. Type the e-mail address and password of your Worktivity account into Your e-mail address and Your password, then press Login.
3. Read the first setup step, which lists what the app records, then grant the two permissions the next two steps ask for.
4. Press Clock in on the Track tab when you start working.

The permissions it asks for

Signing in leads straight into a three step setup: a plain list of what is recorded, then one step for each permission macOS controls. Continue stays inactive until the permission is on, and the reason is written above the button.

• Screen Recording lets Worktivity take the periodic screenshot your organization asked for. Without it the screenshot is simply never taken.
• Accessibility lets Worktivity read the name of the app in front of you, the title of that window and the address open in your browser. Without it every entry is recorded as unknown.

Why macOS splits these in two, what each button on those steps does, and why the Screen Recording step asks you to quit and reopen the app is all in which permissions macOS asks for. The setup runs once for each person who uses the Mac. Afterwards the live status of both permissions sits in Settings, under Permissions.

Two smaller questions reach you from macOS outside that setup. The first time the app runs, macOS asks whether Worktivity may send you notifications, which is how the app reaches you while its window is closed. And the first time you use Safari, Chrome, Edge, Opera or Vivaldi while tracking, macOS asks whether Worktivity may control that browser: that request is what stands behind reading the address of the page you have open. Firefox is read a different way and asks for nothing extra.

Starting when you log in

You do not have to switch this on. The app registers itself as a login item the first time it runs, so it comes up with your Mac from then on. macOS can hold that registration until you approve it, and when it does, the approval is in System Settings under General, in the login items list.

Updates

There is no updater inside the app and no Check for updates button to hunt for. New versions arrive through the Mac App Store, exactly like every other app you installed from it, and Settings says as much at the foot of the About section.

To see what you are running, open Settings and read Version at the top of About: it prints the version with the build number next to it. The same version is printed at the bottom of the sign-in screen, which is where to look when you are not signed in yet.

Removing it

Clock out first, while the machine still has a connection, so the work you just did is uploaded rather than left waiting on the Mac. Anything still queued is never sent once the app is gone.

Then choose Quit Worktivity from the menu bar icon and delete the app the way you delete any other: from Launchpad, or by dragging it out of Applications. The login item lives inside the app bundle, so it goes with it and nothing is left behind that starts when you log in. Records already uploaded stay in your Worktivity account and are not touched.