epoch
Automatic coding time tracking for Visual Studio
Seamlessly records your focus time and syncs it to your epoch instance.
What it does
epoch runs silently in the background and tracks how much time you actively spend coding. It detects your current project via git, sends periodic heartbeats to your epoch instance, and shows a live timer in the status bar. Everything works offline — heartbeats are queued locally and synced automatically when connectivity is restored.
This is the Visual Studio edition. It is a feature-for-feature port of the VS Code extension and shares the same on-disk configuration, so if you run both editors you only configure your API key once.
Features
- Live status bar — shows today's total coding time at a glance (
epoch: 1 hrs 23 mins)
- Automatic project detection — resolves the project name from your git
origin remote
- Offline queue — heartbeats are stored locally and flushed when back online
- Zero configuration needed — connects to
https://epoch.mirello.cloud by default
- Self-hosted support — point it at any epoch instance with a custom URL
- Shared config with VS Code — uses the same
~/.config/epoch/config.json
Requirements
- Visual Studio 2022 or 2026 (17.x–18.x), Community / Professional / Enterprise
Getting started
- Install the
.vsix (double-click it, or via Extensions → Manage Extensions)
- Open Tools and run
epoch: Set API Key
- Optionally run
epoch: Set Instance if you're using a self-hosted server
- Start coding — the timer appears in the bottom-left status bar
Commands
All commands live under the Tools menu.
| Command |
Description |
epoch: Set API Key |
Store your epoch API key |
epoch: Set Instance |
Set the URL of your epoch instance |
epoch: Validate API Key |
Check that your key authenticates successfully |
epoch: Open Dashboard |
Open your epoch dashboard in the browser |
epoch: Show Output |
Open the epoch output pane for diagnostics |
Configuration
Configuration is stored at ~/.config/epoch/config.json (respects $XDG_CONFIG_HOME) — the same file the VS Code extension uses.
| Key |
Default |
Description |
apiKey |
— |
API key for authentication |
baseUrl |
https://epoch.mirello.cloud |
URL of your epoch instance |
Status bar indicators
| Display |
Meaning |
epoch: 2 hrs 14 mins |
Tracking — connected and syncing |
epoch: 1 hrs 05 mins (offline) |
Offline — data queued for sync |
epoch: ✕ Unconfigured (set API key) |
API key missing or invalid |
Building from source
Open EpochVisualStudio.sln in Visual Studio 2022 or 2026 with the Visual Studio extension development workload installed, then build. The .vsix is produced under bin\Debug / bin\Release. Pressing F5 launches an experimental VS instance with the extension loaded.
Continuous integration builds every push via GitHub Actions; pushing a v* tag builds and publishes to the Visual Studio Marketplace.
How it maps to the VS Code extension
| VS Code concept |
Visual Studio equivalent |
onDidChangeActiveTextEditor / onDidChangeTextDocument / onDidSaveTextDocument |
WindowEvents.WindowActivated / TextEditorEvents.LineChanged / DocumentEvents.DocumentSaved |
window.state.focused |
Win32 foreground-window check against the IDE main window |
| Status bar item |
IVsStatusbar |
vscode.commands.registerCommand |
.vsct command table + OleMenuCommandService |
vscode.git extension API |
parsing .git/config for the origin remote |
https/http |
HttpClient |
| output channel |
IVsOutputWindowPane |
License
GPL-3.0 — see LICENSE for details.
Built by Mirello
