Installation guide

System Requirements

1. MacOS with Apple Silicon - Sonoma 14 or later
2. 4.7 GB of free disk space as required by llama3
3. A fast internet connection for the initial llama3 model download. No internet required after that.

1️⃣ Download and unzip zip file

Download the release file from the: MakerTime Website

After unzipping it, you should see several files:

2️⃣ Double click DMG

You should see this:

3️⃣ Drag MakerTime app into Applications folder

For this step, just drag the app into the Applications folder.

It should appear in your Applications folder now:

4️⃣ Install ollama

By default, MakerTime requires Ollama to run the llama3 local open source LLM model. Ollama is a framework that lets you run various open source LLM models locally on Apple Silicon laptops.

Download and install MacOSX ollama

It is also recommended to install the Ollama CLI tools when installing Ollama:

5️⃣ Launch the MakerTime app

After opening, it should show some permissions windows about allowing screen recording and controlling browsers like safari and chrome:

followed by:

Note

This popup screen can be easily hidden and hard to find. If that happens, don’t worry about it and just manually open the settings and navigate to the settings section shown below. It can be found under Settings / Privacy & Security / Screen & System Audio Recording

You may also see one-time popups like this:

which allows MakerTime to see what app you are currently running, and this for both Safari and Chrome:

which allows MakerTime to see what URL is being viewed in the browser, in order to detect whether you’ve changed contexts.

6️⃣ Verify MakerTime is running

After double clicking the MakerTime icon, you won’t see an application window, but it should be running in the background.

Look for the MakerTime icon in the menu bar:

and you should see a menu bar icon with the following options:

If you don’t even see the menu bar icon, see Cannot find app in menu bar.

click the Status item and ensure it says: “Connected”

If it says Checking… for a long time, it’s most likely downloading the llama3 model, which can take several minutes depending on your internet speed. Eventually it should update to “Connected”. If not, reach out to support.

7️⃣ Allow screen recording in settings

Note

This setting is crucial, without it nothing will work. It can be a bit tricky.

Open the settings and navigate to the settings section shown below. It can be found under Settings / Privacy & Security / Screen & System Audio Recording

If you do not see it listed, try re-installing MakerTime, waiting a few minutes, or even rebooting.

MakerTime will quit and re-open when you check this box.

Note

If MakerTime does not quit and restart when you enable screen recording, then it likely didn’t work and MakerTime will not be able to view your screen. In that case, try removing it with the minus sign (”-”) and reinstalling MakerTime again.

👏 Congrats, you have it running!

At this point, installation is finished!

What to do next:

1. Let it run in the background for a few hours
2. Click the MakerTime icon in the menu bar and choose

It should display a popup window letting you how much deep work you’ve logged for the day.

See the User guide for information on how to further configure and use the app.

🤨 Can’t get it working? Troubleshooting tips

If you can’t find a fix from the following common issues, reach out to support.

Cannot find app in menu bar

Possible reasons:

1. It may have crashed
2. You may have too many items in your menu bar and MakerTime might be hidden behind the notch. To address this, close unused system tray items or use an app like Bartender to organize your menu bar.

To ensure it hasn’t crashed, open Activity Monitor and search for “makertime”. You should see at least one app running called ai.makertime.

It doesn’t seem to be analyzing my activity

Try the following:

1. Open a terminal
2. Run ollama run llama3:latest
3. At the prompt, type hello llama3 and see if you get a response.

If you get an error running llama3 it may suggest you’re running in an unsupported environment. On a Parallels VM or a non-Apple Silicon machine you may see the following error:

Error: llama runner process has terminated: signal: abort trap error:unsupported op 'MUL_MAT'
GGML_ASSERT: /Users/runner/work/ollama/ollama/llm/llama.cpp/ggml-metal.m:918: !"unsupported op"

Reach out to support for help.

Damaged file error

If you see this error message when trying to run it:

This shouldn’t happen, reach out to support if you see it.