Searchable work timeline
Hansel builds a timeline of your workday so you can review what you did, when you did it, and how your time was spent without manually starting timers.
Hansel
Hansel is a Mac app that records your work activity so you can search past context, review meetings, and answer questions about what you did. It stores data locally on your Mac by default and is currently free during beta.
Work memory for Mac
Hansel is a Mac app for remembering what you worked on. It records your activity so you can search past work, revisit meetings, and recover details you did not write down.
The product is centered on a searchable timeline of your day. It organizes activity around the work you were doing, and it lets you ask questions about recent work, projects, meetings, tags, and time spent.
Hansel also emphasizes local storage on your Mac. The site says activity history, chats, screenshots, and recordings are stored only on your device by default and are always encrypted, with keys kept in your Mac’s Keychain.
During beta, Hansel is free. After beta, the pricing page says it will cost $20 per month. The app requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
Core features
Search meetings and calls
The app can search meetings and calls for decisions, details, and follow-ups you may need to recover later.
Work connected to context
Hansel can connect activities to projects, apps, and documents so the timeline is organized around actual work, not just app usage.
Screen rewind and OCR search
It includes screen rewind and OCR search, which helps when you remember seeing something on screen but not where it appeared.
Work-history Q&A
You can ask questions about your work history, such as what you got done, where a decision came from, or which project took the most time.
Work-history search tools
On the pricing page, Hansel is described as supporting searchable meetings and calls, time connected to projects, apps and documents, and answers based on work history.
Common ways to use Hansel
Daily work review
Review a summary of your day to see what you worked on, how long tasks took, and where your time went across apps and documents.
Meeting recall
Search past meetings or calls when you need a decision, a detail, or a follow-up that was not captured elsewhere.
Context recovery for projects
Ask where a specific idea, bug fix, or project decision came from when you need to trace the context behind later work.
Screen-based recall
Revisit a screen you saw earlier when you remember the content but not the app or page where it appeared.
Time-spent review
Check how much time a project took without running a stopwatch, then use that history to understand workload patterns.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Searches your work history instead of relying on manual notes or timers.
- Covers several retrieval modes: timeline review, meeting search, screen rewind, OCR search, and question-based lookup.
- Stores data locally on your Mac by default and encrypts it.
- Uses the Mac Keychain for encryption keys and says AI requests go only to providers with zero-data-retention policies.
- Offers a free beta period with no credit card required.
Cons
- The product requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
- The available sources give only limited detail about integrations and connected apps beyond projects, apps, and documents.
- Pricing changes after beta, so the free period is temporary.
FAQ
What does Hansel do?
Hansel is a Mac app that records your work activity and lets you search it later. You can ask questions about recent work, meetings, projects, tags, and what you got done.
How does pricing work?
The source states that Hansel is free during beta and will cost $20 per month after beta. No credit card is required during beta.
How is data stored and protected?
By default, Hansel stores activity history, chats, screenshots, and recordings only on your Mac. Those files are encrypted, and the encryption keys stay in your Mac’s Keychain.
What devices does Hansel require?
Hansel supports an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
How do I send feedback?
The pricing page says you can send feedback from inside the app by choosing Help > Send Feedback.
Quick Facts
- Category
- Productivity / AI Chat
- Platform
- Mac
- Requirement
- Apple Silicon Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Pricing
- Free during beta; $20/month after beta
- Data storage
- Stored locally on the Mac by default and encrypted
- Website
- hansel.so
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