Understanding Hubstaff: A Time Tracking Powerhouse

In order to beat Hubstaff and increase activity levels, we must first fully understand what it does and how it tracks our time. In this article, we will go through features of Hubstaff and focus on it's monitoring capabilities. We will then go in depth on how each metric it tracks can be tricked and hacked with LazyWork, a powerful companion tool for any worker using Hubstaff.

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What is Hubstaff?

Hubstaff is more than just a time tracking tool; it’s a multifaceted platform that enables teams to track time, manage tasks, and monitor productivity effortlessly. Founded in 2012, Hubstaff has evolved into a versatile tool trusted by remote teams, freelancers, and enterprises worldwide.

Features and Functionality

Time Tracking

At its core, Hubstaff excels in tracking time accurately. Its intuitive interface allows users to start and stop timers with ease, providing real-time insights into how time is spent on various tasks and projects. With desktop, web, and mobile applications, tracking time becomes seamless, regardless of the device being used.

Activity Monitoring

Hubstaff goes beyond mere time tracking by incorporating activity monitoring features. Screenshots, app and URL tracking, and optional keystroke monitoring help to gauge productivity levels and ensure that time is utilized effectively.

Reporting and Analytics

The tool offers robust reporting capabilities, generating detailed timesheets and insightful reports. Users can analyze trends, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions to optimize workflows and increase overall efficiency. Employers are provided with a lot of activity data collected by Hubstaff, which as seen below, are the metrics that employers generally use to gauge employee's day to day performance. Insights is only available by default on Teams and Enterprise plans - Basic and Growth plans provide this feature as an add-on.

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Project Management

Integrating project management features, Hubstaff allows for task assignment, team collaboration, and project progress tracking. This consolidation of time tracking and task management within one platform streamlines operations and enhances team productivity.

Benefits of Hubstaff

Enhanced Productivity

By providing a clear overview of where time is being spent, Hubstaff empowers individuals and teams to identify productivity gaps and make informed adjustments to optimize their workflow.

Remote Team Management

Especially beneficial for remote teams, Hubstaff ensures accountability and facilitates seamless communication by providing visibility into work hours and activities regardless of geographical locations.

Billing and Invoicing

For freelancers and businesses that bill clients based on hours worked, Hubstaff simplifies the billing process by generating accurate invoices based on tracked time.

Integration Capabilities

Hubstaff integrates seamlessly with various third-party applications and project management tools, enhancing its functionality and making it adaptable to different workflow preferences.

User Experience and Support

With a user-friendly interface and responsive customer support, Hubstaff offers a smooth experience for users, ensuring that they can make the most of its features without encountering significant hurdles.

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Can Hubstaff activity tracker be hacked?

We've gone through some of the core features Hubstaff has and how it's used for employee monitoring - but ultimately, the question that remains to be answered is can Hubstaff even be hacked and can we cheat the activity levels?

Our answer: Yes, of course! Let's see how LazyWork can help you trick Hubstaff into thinking you're at high activity levels even without touching your computer!

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Although Hubstaff is powerful and tracks a multitude of metrics, activities and inputs, there are still ways to trick Hubstaff into thinking you have high activity levels while you are actually away from your keyboard! This includes human-like mouse movement simulation, keypress automation, browser interactions and more! Let's talk about how this can be accomplished and how it would look like to your employers.

Here are 3 main tricks you can use to hack Hubstaff monitors, increase your activity levels and get perfect performance metrics output!

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Trick #1: Human-like Mouse Movements

One of the biggest issues with old school mouse jigglers is that they can easily be detected by Hubstaff's advance activity monitors. Traditional mouse jigglers or simple software repeats the same pattern with the sole focus being triggering some sort of movement on the computer to prevent idle detection. Although it succeeds in preventing a computer from going idle, they do not provide enough complexity to trick software trackers such as Hubstaff.

In order to actually log mouse activity successfully in Hubstaff, it requires human-like mouse movement. Human movements are generally unpredictable and randomized. There should be variety in distance, velocity and frequency of the cursor. Another important mouse movement that gets glossed over is the scroll wheel and mouse clicks. Many time tracking software like Hubstaff actually considers scrolling and clicking to be part of regular human-like activities. Without them, the activity level is considered low. Traditional software and jigglers unfortunately do not provide any randomness, scroll or clicking at all.

LazyWork was built with human movements in mind with the additional benefit of providing customizability on how often these movements should occur, which provides user a way to mimic their own movement patterns with combination of movements, scrolling and clicks. For in depth guide on customizability, see our starter guide.

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Trick #2: Keypress Automation

Similar to mouse movements, keypresses should also have randomized inputs and variety of speed and breaks. Several programming languages like Python, JavaScript, AutoHotkey, and PowerShell, among others, offer libraries or modules dedicated to automating keyboard inputs. These libraries enable developers to simulate keypresses, combinations, and sequences programmatically. Although powerful, the bar to entry to intricate automation may be steep.

Utilizing existing services like LazyWork for keyboard input automation often involves user-friendly interfaces or intuitive platforms that require minimal technical expertise. This accessibility allows a broader range of users to benefit from automation without the need for extensive scripting or programming knowledge.

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Trick #3: Browser and Window Tabbing

One of the major pain points from employee perspective for Hubstaff is the screenshot functionality. Employers often enable this and review screenshots to see whether employees are actually working. No matter how smart your mouse movement and keyboard input algorithms are, screenshots are immutable proof that you are cheating the system if they catch you idling on the same screen over hours of work. This is where the last trick comes in.

With screenshots, the easiest way one can trick it is to make sure desktop being screenshotted continuously evolves and changes over the work day. One can manually change the app every 5-10 minutes, but to fully automate this, we must use some form of browser or window tab switching software. LazyWork has this functionality provided for all it's users, allowing customization of how often an app or browser tab gets switched, which provides the illusion of activity through screenshots.

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See LazyWork in action in our latest video

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Closing Thoughts

We've gone through some of the most important tricks one can use to hack Hubstaff activity reports and increase activity levels. Ultimately it is up to the individuals on how they want to improve their metrics, but we believe LazyWork was built to solve this issue with as little technical know-how and simplicity in mind.

Hubstaff may be a powerful tool for employers to track productivity metrics, but LazyWork works as a companion for employees to beat Hubstaff tracking and perform their best however they like to without worrying about idle warnings and poor reviews just from taking a coffee break.

LazyWork provides a 7-day free trial and hassle-free cancellation. Try it today and see for yourself how it can improve your daily workflow and beat Hubstaff at it's own game!

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