Download Hackers Handbook 2018

ActivityWatch – Time-Tracking Application with a Focus on Extensibility and Privacy

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Records what you do so that you can know how you’ve spent your time. All in a secure way where you control the data.

The goal of ActivityWatch is simple: Enable the collection of as much valuable lifedata as possible without compromising user privacy.

We’ve worked towards this goal by creating a application for safe storage of the data on the users local machine and as well as a set of watchers which record data such as:

  • Currently active application and the title of its window
  • Currently active browser tab and it’s title and URL
  • Keyboard and mouse activity, to detect if you are afk or not

It is up to you as user to collect as much as you want, or as little as you want (and we hope some of you will help write watchers so we can collect more).

Installation & Usage

Downloads are available on our releases page.

For instructions on how to get started, please see our guide in the documentation.

Interested in building from source? There’s a guide for that too.

Is this yet another time tracker?

Yes, but we found that most time trackers lack in one or more important features.

Common dealbreakers:

  • Not open source
  • The user does not own the data (common with non-open source options)
  • Lack of synchronization (and when available: it’s centralized and the sync server knows everything)
  • Difficult to setup/use (most open source options tend to target programmers)
  • Low data resolution (low level of detail, does not store raw data, long intevals between entries)
  • Hard or impossible to extend (collecting more data is not as simple as it could be)

To sum it up:

  • Closed source solutions suffer from privacy issues and limited features.
  • Open source solutions aren’t developed with end-users in mind and are usually not written to be easily extended (they lack a proper API). They also lack synchronization.

We have a plan to address all of these and we’re well on our way. See the table below for our progress.

Feature comparison

Basics
User owns data GUI Sync Open Source
ActivityWatch white_check_mark white_check_mark WIP, decentralized white_check_mark
Selfspy white_check_mark x x white_check_mark
ulogme white_check_mark white_check_mark x white_check_mark
RescueTime x white_check_mark Centralized x
WakaTime x white_check_mark Centralized Clients
Platforms
Windows macOS Linux Android
ActivityWatch white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark WIP
Selfspy white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark x
ulogme x white_check_mark white_check_mark x
RescueTime white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark
Tracking
App & Window Title AFK Browser Extensions Editor Plugins Extensible
ActivityWatch white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark
Selfspy white_check_mark white_check_mark x x x
ulogme white_check_mark white_check_mark x x x
RescueTime white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark x x
WakaTime x white_check_mark white_check_mark white_check_mark Only for text editors

For a complete list of the things ActivityWatch can track, see the page on watchers in the documentation.

About this repository

This repo is a bundle of the core components and official modules of ActivityWatch (managed with git submodule). It’s primary use is as a meta-package providing all the components in one repo; enabling easier packaging and installation. It is also where releases of the full suite are published (see releases).

Server

aw-server is the official implementation of the core service which the other ActivityWatch services interact with. It provides a REST API to a datastore and query engine. It also serves the web interface developed in the aw-webui project (which provides the frontend part of the webapp).

The REST API includes:

  • Access to a datastore suitable for timeseries/timeperiod-data
  • A query engine and language for such data

The webapp includes:

  • Data visualization & browser
  • Query explorer
  • Export functionality
    • Import is not currently implemented, see issue #103.

Watchers

ActivityWatch comes pre-installed with two watchers, aw-watcher-afk which logs the presence/absence of user activity from keyboard and mouse input and aw-watcher-window which logs the currently active application and it’s window title.

There are lots of other watchers for ActivityWatch which can track more types of activity such as aw-watcher-web which tracks time spent on websites, multiple editor watchers which tracks spent time coding and many more! A full list of watchers can be found in our documentation here.

Libraries

  • aw-core – core library, provides no runnable modules
  • aw-client – client library, useful when writing watchers
Also read: Dradis Framework – Collaboration and reporting for IT Security teams

Download ActivityWatcher

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