activitywatch.net
Open-source time tracking for automatic activity monitoring on PC
AI Summary
ActivityWatch is an open-source tool for automatic tracking and analysis of computer usage. It tracks visited websites, used applications, and active windows locally on your own computer. The software provides detailed insights into work habits and time usage with full data control.
✓ Pros
- + Completely open source and free to use
- + All data remains stored locally - maximum data privacy
- + Cross-platform available for Windows, macOS, and Linux
✗ Cons
- − Requires manual installation and configuration
- − User interface less polished than commercial alternatives
Use Cases
- → Automatic tracking of daily work hours and productive phases
- → Analysis of time wasters and distractions during development work
- → Creation of detailed time reports for freelancers and self-employed professionals
- → Optimization of personal productivity through evaluation of usage patterns
Who is it for?
Ideal for developers, freelancers, and privacy-conscious knowledge workers who want to analyze their productivity without sending data to the cloud.
Tags
What is activitywatch.net?
ActivityWatch automatically tracks what you do on your computer: which applications are open, which windows are actively in use, and which websites are open in the browser. The software runs locally in the background and writes all data exclusively to your own machine. There is no cloud sync, no account, and no third party with access to the recorded usage data. ActivityWatch is fully open source and available free of charge.
Core features
- Automatic app and window tracking: ActivityWatch detects the active window and logs the application name and duration without any manual effort.
- Browser tracking: Visited websites are captured via browser extensions and included in the analysis.
- Local data storage: All activity data stays on your own device. No external transmission takes place.
- Reporting and visualization: A built-in dashboard shows time distributions by application, category, and time period.
- Cross-platform support: ActivityWatch runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Who is activitywatch.net for?
ActivityWatch is aimed at developers and freelancers who want to understand how they spend their time without sending usage data to external services. Anyone who regularly produces timesheets, or wants to know how much time actually goes into coding, research, or meetings, gets a data-based foundation here. People looking to improve their focus can draw concrete conclusions from the patterns. Privacy-conscious users who reject cloud-based tracking tools on principle will find this the only relevant category of alternatives.
Context & alternatives
ActivityWatch belongs to the category of automatic time tracking, meaning tools that record activity without manually starting timers. Commercial products in this space, such as Timing (macOS) or RescueTime, offer cleaner interfaces and more automated categorization. The trade-off is an account and cloud connectivity. ActivityWatch reverses that compromise: the reporting views are functional, but less polished. Anyone willing to handle the initial setup themselves and accept a leaner UI gets full control over all recorded data in return.
