Harvest App Reviews

Very useful to track time of any task. But when you go offline (e.g: locking screen) it takes so long to get back online again, not allowing you to track anything, unless you re-open it.

The Harvest time tracker application is great for starting and stopping time trackers, but the interface and functionality could use a bit of work. The start timer dialog does not remember the last time after the day changes. It often does not update the project box’s error status when the client is changed until that box is clicked. And if it has trouble contacting the server on launch it seems to forget all the authentication information and needs to be reconnected manually. Overall the service is great, but the app needs work.

This application is useful, but it constantly logs me out and requires re-authentication on a regular basis. Why can’t it just stay connected?

When functioning, the app is useful. But it constantly believes itself to be “offline” (often when the computer comes back from sleep, but the app never corrects itself when connectivity is fully functioning). Since you can’t start or stop timers when “offline”, the app becomes rather useless.

All in all, I really like the Harvest app. It works well for what I need. Sometimes it gets a little confused if two timers are running or I’m working late as which to display (sometimes displaying no active timer at all), but it’s a rare bug. However, the biggest problem I have with this app, and one that would be a really, really easy fix/preference addition - the COLOR of the little H icon. The blue, contrasted on the black background, is difficult to spot quickly. It seems even darker on the most recent version of this app. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked away from my computer, only to come back the next day with a “You left your timer going for [insert some absurd amount of hours] hours here, remove idle time?” If that little H was orange or red, guess what? I’d see it. I used to go into the application package and change the icon color, but it doesn’t look like that’s possible any longer either.

The app does not let you add time for previous days, and instead wants you to go to their website to do this. Until this changes the app is not terribly useful unless you really need a timer, which if you are on a Mac, you could accomplish by simply running “time cat” at the command line and hitting ctrl+c when you are done timing (never thought I would be the grumpy curmudgeon spouting off about 1-liner terminal commands… man am I getting old….)

This new version (1.4.1) is great! Fixes lots of issues I had with the old ones and looks great too.

The new styling looks great. I think they forgot to update the Today button (it appears if you flip back to a previous day) to the new flat styling.

I’ve been using this service and app for a little over a year, and I’ve always been happy with it. I’m all about aesthetics, and so I’ve been waiting for a retina update and am so glad it’s finally here! Looks beautiful on a retina MacBook. The only thing I would suggest for an addition to the app would be a week view – even if it’s just a visual overview that isn’t editable. I’d like to see the total hours logged per day and the total hours for the week in the app. Then maybe a user could click on a day of the week to jump to that day in the normal day view. No complaints here though! Great app.

The number of bugs in this and every other version of this app is enought to make me want to leave the service all together. Of course, there’s a barrier to exit, but one of these days when I have a bit of time, I’ll shut it down. I’ve contacted support directly and reported a lot of bugs spanning multiple versions, but they never get fixed. The app loses my information all the time, and that’s unacceptable. If you were thinking of signing up with harvest, don’t. There are better services out there.

The Harvest app requires a Harvest account, which has four pricing options, and only one is free. You can download the app for free, and use it for free with a max of 4 clients and 2 projects.

Really like the new version. Sometime while I wasn’t paying attention they added a way to keep the timesheet visible at all times. You add time just like you do in the web app. Neither the web app, nor the desktop app have lost any of my data. (This was mentioned in another comment.) No crashes, and everything works the way I’d expect. Now that I can keep the timesheet visible at all times, the desktop app fits into my workflow a lot better. Seeing the timesheet helps make sure I don’t leave timers running or forget to record a time entry. Two downsides: First, if I add a new project on the site, I have to restart the desktop app before the new project will show up in the list. (Not sure if I’m not patient enough for it to poll an updated list of projects, or if it only updates on launch.) Second, the list of entries appears in the order it was added. I switch across multiple projects pretty frequently, so it’d be better for me if it was alphabetized by project.

This version (1.4.2) fails to get the archived status of newly-archived projects. The bug has been outstanding for several months, and I’ve got clients who have monthly budgets that I manage with separate projects. Frustrating to have a bug that bites me every day get introduced and sit there for months. The response from support was along the lines of “any day now but no specific date”.

I used to love the app, but something changed recently that is causing projects to be listed dozens of times in the dropdown, and this has been causing the app to be slow and crash consistently to the point where I can’t use it! I sent them a tech support message and they said a fix was coming soon, but that was nearly a month ago! Too bad too, I love the functionality of the app, but I’m thinking giving a negative review is the only way to get them to fix it.

The UI icons are missing. Now, I am sad.

This is a desktop app for a paid subscription service. This was not made clear at all in the app description.

Whenever I come back to my computer after a break, it allows me to remove idle time. This would be an awesome feature if it actually worked! Instead it never connects, then I have to manually fix my time and restart the app, since it gets all out of sync.

Having recently switched to Harvest from SlimTimer, this app is more useful to me than the iOS version since it’s always available from my desktop. That said, this one lacks the offline functionality found in the iOS app, which is strange, considering it seems largely intended to be used by freelancers and consultants, who may not always have a reliable network connection. Furthermore, it would be great to be able to access any of the multiple projects which have recently running times (i.e. from earlier today or earlier in the week). That would save me a lot of clicking when I’m already dealing with mental context switching.

I really like the app but it is really buggy. Sometimes the UI get garbled and shows entries from previous days. Also please improve auto complete so that it matches patterns inside entire strings. For example, when you type: "Pr10" it should match a project named "Project - SOW 10", and "CliCon" should match "My Client - Consulting".

This is definitely helpful, but it is FULL to the brim of bugs. It gets really hard to use. I have to restart it repeatedly just to get it to add a new item most of the time. I would really love to see Harvest actively developing this app, but they are not. Not much happens at all. So this is what we get… It also requires a network connection, which kind of makes the app a bit useless. It does have some added ease over online, but it would be a big help if you could track time offline and have sync. The big added benefit is that it tracks idle time, and asks if you want to remove it, HOWEVER, you have to make sure your computer is fully connected to the internet before you click on the button to remove it or it will fail, and not give you a second chance. There are so many bugs, but I do continue to use it… So many bugs. I really wish Harvest cared that they have put out such a crappy piece of software and represents them…