Where the number lives

Microsoft ties time played to your Xbox profile rather than to the PC app's library, so you check it the same way whether you played on a console or on Windows:

  1. In the Xbox app or on the console. Open your profile, go to Achievements, pick a game, and open its stats. Time played appears among the recorded statistics.
  2. On the web. Sign in at account.xbox.com, open your Xbox profile, then Achievements, and select a game to see its stats.

There is no single screen that totals your library, and no way to sort games by hours played. You look up one title at a time.

Why so many PC games show nothing

Time played is reported by the game through Xbox services, not measured by the launcher. A PC title that ships without full Xbox integration - and a large share of Game Pass PC titles fall into this group - simply never reports the statistic. You get achievements but no hours, or no stats page at all.

This is the single biggest complaint about Game Pass on PC for anyone who likes tracking their library. Because Game Pass encourages trying a lot of games briefly, it is exactly the service where you would most want a reliable record of what you actually played and for how long.

The rotation problem

Game Pass titles leave the catalogue. When a game rotates out and you uninstall it, whatever partial record existed becomes even harder to find, and the game disappears from your installed library entirely. A month later it is genuinely difficult to answer "did I play that, and was it worth buying?"

A local tracker keeps its own entry regardless of whether the game is still installed or still in the catalogue, which turns Game Pass into something you can review at the end of a subscription month.

Tracking Game Pass PC games automatically

Game Pass games on Windows are still ordinary Windows processes. PlayCounter runs in the background, recognises the executable, and times the session - whether the game was started from the Xbox app, from a pinned Start menu tile, or from a desktop shortcut.

The result is one library view with cover art, per-game totals, session counts, and recent history that includes your Game Pass titles next to your Steam, Epic, and standalone games. Nothing is tied to a Microsoft account, and the record stays on the PC.

Two caveats worth stating plainly. Some Microsoft Store and Game Pass titles install into protected folders with unusual executable names, so an occasional game needs a one-time local identification. And PlayCounter starts counting from install; it cannot recover the hours Xbox never recorded in the first place.