Capturing your time

Once Chrona is set up, tracking is mostly hands-off: you start recording and let it run. This page (for staff) explains how capture works, how to start and stop it, and which settings you can adjust. Most people can leave the defaults alone.

How capture works

Chrona builds your timeline in a pipeline that keeps your screen private:

1. Capture — Chrona saves a screenshot on a set interval, stored locally on your machine.
2. Batch & analyze — screenshots are grouped into short, compressed videos and sent to Google Gemini for analysis.
3. Generate cards — Gemini's observations are synthesized into structured timeline cards, each with a title, category, optional subcategory, a summary, details, and any websites it detected.

Note: Screenshots never leave your machine except to be analyzed by Gemini, and they are never sent to your firm. Only the finished timeline cards can sync.

Start and stop recording

The recording control is in Settings → Capture and also in the Quick capture panel beside the in-app Dashboard.

• Click Start recording to begin, Stop recording to pause capture.
• A status line tells you what's happening, for example Recording · display=1 · last=2:45 PM. You may also see:
  • Idle — not currently recording.
  • System paused (sleep/lock) — Chrona automatically pauses while your computer is asleep or locked.
  • A Last capture error message if something went wrong (for example, if screen-recording permission was revoked).

Capture settings

Open Settings → Capture to control how Chrona records:

Setting	What it does
Interval (seconds)	How often a screenshot is taken. Lower = more detail and more storage; higher = lighter. Enter a value and click Save.
Capture display	Which monitor to capture: Auto (cursor) follows the display your cursor is on, or pick a specific display by resolution.

The logical day (4 AM to 4 AM)

Chrona organizes your timeline into a logical day that runs from 4 AM to 4 AM rather than midnight to midnight. This keeps a late-night work session on the same "day" it started, instead of splitting it in two.

Note: The 4 AM boundary is fixed. In practice it means activity at, say, 1 AM is counted as part of the previous calendar day's timeline.

Storage

Chrona stores recordings on your machine and cleans up automatically as limits are reached. Open Settings → Storage to manage this:

• The header shows current usage for Recordings and Timelapses.
• Set Recordings limit (GB) and Timelapses limit (GB), then click Save limits.
• Purge now runs cleanup immediately; Open recordings opens the storage folder in your file browser.
• Turn on Generate timelapses (and set Timelapse FPS) if you want short timelapse videos attached to your timeline cards. This is off by default.

Advanced settings & tuning

These settings change how aggressively Chrona analyzes activity and which AI model it uses. Most people can leave these at their defaults — adjust them only if you want faster updates, lighter resource use, or a different model.

Analysis (Settings → Analysis)

Pick a preset to fill in sensible values, then click Save:

Preset	Best for
Balanced	The recommended default.
Faster updates	More frequent analysis in smaller batches.
Low resource	Less frequent analysis in larger batches.
Catch-up	A longer lookback to process a backlog after downtime.

The scheduler and batching fields beneath the presets (check interval, lookback window, batch durations, and the card-generation window) let you tune things further, with on-screen explanations for each. Run analysis tick forces one analysis pass immediately if you don't want to wait for the scheduler.

AI (Settings → AI (Gemini))

Here you can re-enter or update your API key, choose the Model (for example gemini-3-flash-preview, gemini-2.5-flash, or gemini-2.5-pro from the presets), and adjust runtime options such as request timeout and retry attempts. Click Save Gemini settings when done.

Prompts (Settings → Prompts)

Add short instructions that Chrona inserts into its default prompts for transcription, card generation, the Ask chat, and journal drafts — for example, "Prefer naming apps and websites when clear." Keep them brief, then click Save prompt settings.

Once Chrona is capturing, head to Exploring your timeline to see and refine your day.