The menu bar time agent
Understand the small Hailo icon in your menu bar, what it counts as editing time, the one optional permission, and where your hours show up.
Hailo installs a small helper that lives in your menu bar and counts the time you spend editing in Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. It turns those hours into a real per-film rate on your dashboard. It runs on its own after the first launch of Hailo and needs no setup.
What it is
The time agent is a separate helper that starts when you log in to your Mac, whether or not Hailo is open. It has no window and no Dock icon, only an icon in the menu bar. Hailo installs it the first time the app runs and keeps it current with each update.
The agent only records seconds. Hailo's pages do the adding up and the display.
What counts as editing time
A second counts when both of these are true:
- Your editor is the frontmost app. The agent watches the editor you chose under Settings > Your editor.
- You are working in it: you typed, clicked or scrolled in the last 1.5 seconds, or the editor is busy (above 15% of a processor core, which covers playback and rendering with your hands off the mouse).
Reading email with the editor behind another window does not count. Watching a clip play back in the editor does. Runs of active seconds are sent to Hailo every ten seconds in chunks of up to a minute, so an hour of editing lands in the right hour on the chart.
Permissions
The agent needs no special permission to count time. It reads how recently you used the keyboard or mouse and how busy the editor is, neither of which macOS gates.
One permission is optional. Reading the name of the project open in your editor needs Screen Recording on newer macOS. The agent asks once, the first time it sees real editing. If you allow it, your hours attach to the wedding whose project is open. If you decline, time still counts, without a project name, and you can link it to a wedding later.
To grant it later: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording, and turn on HailoTimeAgent.
The menu
The icon shows the Hailo mark. Next to it, "● 12m" while tracking (the length of the current run) or "○" when idle. Click it for:
| Item | What it shows or does |
|---|---|
| Today · | Hours counted today |
| This week · | Hours counted this week |
| Status line | "Not editing", or the editor and project name it is counting for |
| Open Hailo | Brings Hailo to the front, or opens it |
| Pause tracking for 1 hour | Stops counting for an hour. The status shows "Paused" with the time it resumes, and the item becomes Resume tracking |
| Quit Time Agent (⌘Q) | Stops the helper. It starts again the next time you log in or open Hailo |
Where the totals show
| Place | What you see |
|---|---|
| Settings > Your editor | The editor Hailo watches, and your last 7 days of editing time by editor. See Your editor and time tracking |
| The Editing time page (from the dashboard) | Titled "Your hours, your real rate." Tracked time for 30 days and this week, your blended rate (contract value divided by hours worked), tracked value across active films, an hourly chart, Billable by film with a per-film rate, and Where you edit by editor |
| Link NLE project | On the Editing time page. Attaches an editor project name the agent saw to a wedding in Hailo, so its hours count toward that film |
If it didn't work
No icon in the menu bar. Open Hailo once; it installs and starts the agent. If it still does not appear, log out and back in.
Hours stay at zero. Check that the editor picked under Settings > Your editor is the one you use. The agent watches only that one. Then check the icon reads "●" while you edit; if it reads "○", click in the editor's window to bring it to the front.
Project names are blank. Screen Recording was not granted. Grant it as above; the agent restarts itself and names start to appear from then on. Earlier time can be linked by hand with Link NLE project.
Time is counted while you are away. The editor was frontmost and rendering or playing back. Pause with Pause tracking for 1 hour when you leave a render running.
You do not want it at all. Choose Quit Time Agent, then remove it as described in Uninstall Hailo.