timo Thank you for your reply. Yes, that is exactly what I observed recently.
At least for the macOS versions, previously, when the time auto-pauses, it will resume from the exact moment it stopped, no subtraction by itself or whatever.
Actually that makes sense, the timer pauses because it detects no human inputs, but actually I was still working (e.g. reading/staring on the screen, etc.) with no active mouse/keyboard input, but indeed I was still working, so the old behavior aligns more to what I expected...