FileTimes.exe is a little program I wrote 10 years ago when I was learning C++. Download it here.

It plots a graph of the write timestamps on all the files in any folder you select (recursing thru all the subfolders). You can look at the time stamps by time of day, week, month or year. You can also control the averaging period with a slider.

Plotted by time of day

It’s fun for looking at when you’re busy – for example you can see here that I’m definitely not a morning person – I don’t really get going much before 10am.

If you move the mouse over the graph, it shows how many files were modified at the time point the mouse is at.

It works on any version of Windows since Win95 (up to Win7, so far). There’s no installer, just run the .EXE wherever you put it (the desktop is fine). It doesn’t mess with the registry, won’t modify your files at all, won’t create any files anywhere, and doesn’t have any viruses or spyware – I promise.

I don't slack off much on weekends, it seems.

It’s free – I hereby put it in the public domain.

This version says “ALPHA TEST VERSION – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE”, but it’s 10 years old. I haven’t found any bugs in it yet – so go ahead and ignore that. (I’m not going to bother re-installing the development tools to change it…)

To use it, just run it, click the “Analyze New Folder…” button, and pick your folder. It works best if you pick something with files a single person has created (you), and if there’s a lot of files in there (thousands).

If you press F1 it’ll try to load a help file – that I never got around to writing. But it’s pretty obvious how to work it.

No obvious patterns here.

In the end, this was the only C++ program I ever wrote (I didn’t like the language much).

Oh – be sure to try dragging the axes with the mouse, and resizing the window while watching the axes. I’m proud of that. 🙂

If someone wants the source code, ask. It’s not particularly pretty code, but if you have a use for it I’ll make it available.