The best free and open-source automated time tracker. Cross-platform, extensible, privacy-focused.
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.
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Table of Contents
About
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 an application for safe storage of the data on the user's local machine and as well as a set of watchers which record data such as:
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).
Screenshots
You can find more (and newer) screenshots on the website.
Installation & Usage
Downloads are available on the releases page.
For instructions on how to get started, please see the 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 one or more important features.
Common dealbreakers:
To sum it up:
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 ✅ ✅
WIP, decentralized ✅
Selfspy ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅
ulogme ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅
RescueTime ❌ ✅ Centralized ❌
WakaTime ❌ ✅ Centralized Clients
Platforms
Windows macOS Linux Android iOS
ActivityWatch ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌
Selfspy ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌
ulogme ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌
RescueTime ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ Limited functionality
Tracking
App & Window Title AFK Browser Extensions Editor Plugins Extensible
ActivityWatch ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Selfspy ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
ulogme ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
RescueTime ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌
WakaTime ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ 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
). Its 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:
The webapp includes:
Watchers
ActivityWatch comes pre-installed with two watchers:
aw-watcher-afk
tracks the user active/inactive state from keyboard and mouse inputaw-watcher-window
tracks the currently active application and its window title.There are lots of other watchers for ActivityWatch which can track more types of activity. Like aw-watcher-web
which tracks time spent on websites, multiple editor watchers which track spent time coding, and many more! A full list of watchers can be found in the documentation.
Libraries
aw-core
- core library, provides no runnable modulesaw-client
- client library, useful when writing watchersFolder structure
Contributing
Want to help? Great! Check out the CONTRIBUTING.md file!
Questions and support
Have a question, suggestion, problem, or just want to say hi? Post on the forum!
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