Idle Clock

Idle Clock is an very simple software application that records how long Windows has been idle. It's capable of keeping track of all idle times since the app's launch and it resets it counter on exit. The tool doesn't integrate any kind of configuration settings, and it can be handled even by inexperienced PC users.

No setup required

This is a portable package, so there is no installation involved. You can simply drop its executable file on an any part of the hard disk and click it to launch Idle Clock. Another possibility is to keep it stored on a USB flash drive, in order to directly run it on any PC and measure idle times. Unlike most installers, it doesn't modify the Windows registry configuration.

Plain and simple interface

The GUI is based on a very small window that starts to count idle time at launch. This frame stays on top of other windows and can be minimized to the taskbar. However, it cannot be resized or sent to the system tray.
The top part of the panel shows the current idle time, measured in hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds. Once Windows exits its idle state, the program saves the idle duration in a separate entry and moves on, so it automatically starts counting the next idle time, therefore creating a stack.

View the system idle time

An idle status is considered to be any period of time when the computer is not being controlled by the user via keyboard or mouse (including mouse movement), as well as by any devices that you suspect to be automatically resetting the system's idle timer without your knowledge or permission. In this case, you can use the utility to figure out the frequency of automatic resets. Otherwise, you can keep it running when leaving your workstation unattended for a longer period of time to find out if anyone has used it and for how long.

Evaluation and conclusion

Unsurprisingly, it's very light on system resources consumption. Although it hasn't been updated for a very long time, it works smoothly on later Windows editions. However, it doesn't implement additional practical options, such as automatically logging idle times to file or at least manually exporting data, which makes it very difficult to manage. On top of that, it only measures the duration of the system idle time, without the time it occurred at, so there's no way of knowing when the event happened.