Phone Call Integration

Timing can import calls made on your iPhone, letting you view them on your Timing timeline and create time entries for them. It does this by importing your Mac's call history, which usually includes phone and FaceTime calls synced from your iPhone.

Read on for more information on how this feature works, how to set it up, and what to expect from it!

Table of Contents

Getting Started

To set up this integration, open Settings > Integrations and click Add next to Phone Calls. Its page lists two steps and checks each one off once it is done:

  1. Turn on Timing in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access. Timing needs this to read the call history on your Mac. When macOS asks you to quit and reopen Timing, choose Quit & Reopen, and the setup continues where you left off.
  2. Optionally, allow Timing to access your contacts. Timing then shows who each call was with. Without this access, calls show only the phone number (or the email address, in the case of FaceTime calls).
The Phone Calls page in the Integrations settings with its numbered setup steps

Once Timing has Full Disk Access, click Set Up.

Timing then starts importing your phone calls in the background. This can take a few hours, so don't worry if the data doesn't show up right away.

Once your call data has been imported, you will see your phone calls on the Timing timeline, similar to calendar events. You can click on them to create time entries.

Two phone calls, with Bob Bishop and Amanda Appleseed, on the timeline next to the recorded app usage

Limitations

While we have tried to make the import process as reliable as possible, there are a few limitations:

  • This integration relies on Apple's iCloud services to sync your data. This means that the initial import may take a while, and there might also be periods of delays later on, during which Timing takes a few hours to reflect your latest calls. If you still aren't seeing any data whatsoever a few hours after setting up the Phone Calls integration, please refer to the "Troubleshooting" section below.
  • For incoming calls accepted on iPhone, the duration of the call does not get synced to your Mac, so those will show up as a "point-in-time" event on the timeline without an end time. This limitation does not apply to outgoing calls as well as any calls made on your Mac, which will show up with the correct duration.
    We hope you still find these "point-in-time" call markers useful as a general orientation on what phone calls you made.

Hiding Calls With Specific Contacts

There might be some contacts in your address book that you don't want to see on your Timing timeline, such as your family. To hide these calls, you can right-click a call with the contact in question on the timeline and select "Hide Contact '…'" from the context menu. This will hide all calls with this contact from your timeline. Please note that there is currently no way to unhide a contact except for immediately undoing this action using e.g. the ⌘Z shortcut, so please use this feature with care.

The context menu of a phone call on the timeline, offering Hide Contact for that caller

Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble getting your iPhone calls imported into Timing or are seeing discrepancies between your actual calls and what Timing shows, please keep reading.

First, check the status of Phone Calls in Settings > Integrations:

  • Active means that Timing can read your call history. Below it, Latest call shows when the newest call in Timing started.
  • Needs Full Disk Access means that Timing lost access to the call history. The integration's page shows the step to grant it again.
  • No call history on this Mac means that your calls don't reach this Mac yet. The integration's page shows how to bring them over.

If the status reads Active and you are still not seeing any data after a few hours, please check whether you see the expected calls both in the Phone app on your iPhone and in the FaceTime app on your Mac. If the data is not there, it can help to reboot your Mac and your iPhone, then wait a few minutes for the calls to sync to the Mac.

If, a few hours after performing all these steps, Timing still shows no calls on the timeline, please reach out with screenshots of your Timing timeline as well as both the iPhone's and the Mac's call history screens from the Phone and FaceTime apps, respectively, so that we can investigate the issue with you.

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