Awatcher is a window activity and idle watcher with an optional tray and UI for statistics. The goal is to compensate the fragmentation of desktop environments on Linux by supporting all reportable environments, to add more flexibility to reports with filters, and to have better UX with the distribution by a single executable.
The foundation is ActivityWatch, which includes the provided server and web UI. The unbundled watcher is supposed to replace the original idle and active window watchers from the original distribution. The bundled executable can be used independently as it contains the server, UI and tray.
The binaries for the bundle, bundled DEB and ActivityWatch watchers replacement can be downloaded from releases.
sudo unzip aw-awatcher.zip -d /usr/local/bin
in the console to allow ActivityWatch to detect its presence.
aw-watcher-window
and aw-watcher-afk
from autostart at aw-qt/aw-qt.toml
in config directory,
add aw-awatcher
.aw-watcher-window_$HOSTNAME
.aw-awatcher
to aw-qt.toml
and install this service configuration. In this case, ActivityWatch server also must be managed by systemd (as aw-server.service
in the config).This is a single binary to run awatcher with the server without changing system and ActivityWatch configuration. The bundle is aw-server-rust and awatcher as a single executable. The data storage is compatible with ActivityWatch and aw-server-rust (aw-server has a different storage), so this can later be run as a module for ActivityWatch.
External modules are run like in the original ActivityWatch distribution
by looking at $PATH
and running all executables whose name starts with aw-
.
They are controled from the tray, no additional configuration is necessary.
It is recommended to use ~/.config/autostart
for the bundle. This folder is employed by "Autostart" in KDE settings and Gnome Tweaks.
Systemd may require to sleep for a few seconds (ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 5
) in order to wait for the environment.
See this service configuration.
ActivityWatch server should be run before awatcher
is running.
At this moment only Linux is supported. The watcher type is selected automatically
as soon as the environment has the necessary interfaces.
Environment | Active window | Idle |
---|---|---|
X11 | :green_circle: | :green_circle: |
Sway, Hyprland | :green_circle: [^1] | :green_circle: [^2] |
Wayland + KDE | :yellow_circle: [^3] | :green_circle: |
Wayland + Gnome | :yellow_circle: [^4] | :green_circle: |
[!IMPORTANT] Gnome watcher in Wayland requires this extension to be installed. Also, if you have problems with tray icons in Gnome, you may try this extension for the bundle (StatusNotifierItem specification).
[^1]: A few other DEs besides Sway may implement wlr foreign toplevel protocol, [^2]: KWin idle and Idle notify protocols are supported. [^3]: KWin doesn't implement any toplevel protocol yet, KWin script is utilized instead (builtin, no actions required). KDE partially supports XWayland, but inconsistently, hence X11 is not utilized for it. [^4]: Gnome doesn't implement any toplevel protocol yet, so this extension should be installed.
The config file is in the default directory (~/.config/awatcher
).
[server]
port = 5600
host = "127.0.0.1"
[awatcher]
idle-timeout-seconds=180
poll-time-idle-seconds=4
poll-time-window-seconds=1
[[awatcher.filters]]
# match only "navigator"
match-app-id = "navigator"
# match any title which contains "Secret" or "secret"
match-title = ".*[sS]ecret.*"
replace-app-id = "firefox"
replace-title = "Unknown"
server.port
and server.host
address the ActivityWatch server instance.awatcher.idle-timeout-seconds
is the time of inactivity when it is considered "idle".awatcher.poll-time-idle-seconds
and awatcher.poll-time-window-seconds
are
intervals between collecting and sending statistics.All options of server
and awatcher
config file's sections can be overridden with command-line arguments, as well as the config path. See the builtin help in the command for details.
awatcher.filters
in the config file is an array of filters and replacements
for the cases when the application name or title should be hidden, or the app is reported incorrectly.
Copy the section as many times as needed for every given filter.
match-app-id
matches the application name.match-title
matches the title name.replace-app-id
replaces the application name with the provided value.replace-title
replaces the window title with the provided value.The first matching filter stops the replacement. There should be at least 1 match field, and at least 1 replace field for a valid filter. Matches are case sensitive regular expressions between implicit ^ and $:
.
matches 1 any character.*
matches any number of any characters.+
matches 1 or more any characters.word
is an exact match.\
to match special characters, e.g. org\.kde\.Dolphin
The replacements in filters also support regexp captures.
A capture takes a string in parentheses from the match and replaces $N
in the replacement.
Example to remove the changed file indicator in Visual Studio Code:
[[awatcher.filters]]
match-app-id = "code"
match-title = "● (.*)"
# Inserts the content within 1st parentheses, this can be in any form, e.g. "App $1 - $2/$3"
replace-title = "$1"
Run the command with "debug" or "trace" verbosity and without reporting to server in the terminal to see what application names and titles are reported to the server.
$ awatcher -vvv --no-server
Names of packages are from Ubuntu, other distributions may have different names.
cargo build --release
in the root of the repository.target/release/awatcher
.Add --no-default-features
to the build command if you want to opt out of the Gnome and KDE support,
add --features=?
("gnome" or "kwin_window") on top of that if you want to enable just one.
To track your activities in browsers install the plugin for your browser from here (Firefox, Chrome etc).
The executable can be bundled with a tray icon, ActivityWatch server and, optionally, Web UI (if steps 1-2 are done):
AW_WEBUI_DIR=/absolute/path/to/dist
and --features=bundle
.This should be compiled on nightly. The complete bundled version is also built and released.
The tray can be disabled with --no-tray
option in the bundled version.