AFK not being detected

Support
#1

I have a problem where ActivityWatch never detects that my system is idle. So my active time on teh Window tab is listed as 100% not-afk.

I even tested with not touching my machine for 30min. Made sure no audio was playing and that I was looking at the ActivityWatch dashboard. I do have two monitors, but not sure if that makes a difference. When I installed ActivityWatch I installed for a single user so it didn’t need elevated permissions. I have checked that the aw-watcher-afk module is checked. This is a default configuration with no changes. The AFK module logs show no issues.

Are there any apps that could be interfering? Or any idea how i can troubleshoot this.

#2

aw-watcher-afk seems to at least be running as it reports not-afk, otherwise there would be no activity at all if it would fail to run.

aw-watcher-afk works by looking at when the last mouse or keyboard activity was reports afk or in your case not-afk depending on how long ago that was (180 seconds/3min by default).

What operating system are you using? Windows, macOS or Linux? The implementation is quite different between these platforms.

#3

Win10 Pro - version 2004

Can confirm that when I tested I wasn’t touching the keyboard or mouse.

#4

Still have this issue, listed below further things I’ve tried or additional info that may help

  • Reinstalled via setup, except this time did for “all users” and gave elevated permissions, all while anti-virus was disabled
  • Turned off the normal server and tried with the rust server module
  • ActivityWatch is installed on a non-system drive
  • Using version 0.9.2
  • Only log entries in aw-watcher-afk log

2020-08-07 09:20:51 [INFO ]: aw-watcher-afk started (aw_watcher_afk.afk:53)
2020-08-07 09:20:52 [INFO ]: Connection to aw-server established by aw-watcher-afk (aw_client.client:348)

  • Getting an error in aw-watcher-window though
    2020-08-07 10:01:33 [ERROR]: Exception thrown while trying to get active window: (-2147217385, ‘OLE error 0x80041017’, None, None) (aw_watcher_window.main:66)

Also

#5

The server certainly seems to be working, I think the only thing needed to debug what’s wrong is aw-watcher-afk.

The first thing to check is that there are events in the aw-watcher-afk bucket under the “Raw Data” tab and check how it looks when.
If the event in there is always “not-afk” even when you are indeed afk, the next thing to debug would be to check what happens when you run aw-watcher-afk from the console with the “-v” or “–verbose” flag as that will print if the mouse is moved or if the keyboard is moved so you can know which one is to blame.

#6

I’m only seeing “not-afk” events in the raw data tab.

I started up the afk module from the console and let it run for 3min without touching anything.
Here is an excerpt from the debug (computer name changed). I can’t read this so not quite sure what is causing the issue.

2020-08-07 22:45:05 [DEBUG]: http “POST /api/0/buckets/aw-watcher-afk_a HTTP/1.1” 304 0 (urllib3.connectionpool:437)
2020-08-07 22:45:05 [INFO ]: Connection to aw-server established by aw-watcher-afk (aw_client.client:348)
2020-08-07 22:45:10 [DEBUG]: Seconds since last input: 0.0 (aw_watcher_afk.afk:79)
2020-08-07 22:45:15 [DEBUG]: Seconds since last input: 0.016 (aw_watcher_afk.afk:79)
2020-08-07 22:45:15 [DEBUG]: Starting new HTTP connection (1): 127.0.0.1:5600 (urllib3.connectionpool:225)
2020-08-07 22:45:15 [DEBUG]: http “POST /api/0/buckets/aw-watcher-afk_a/heartbeat?pulsetime=65.0 HTTP/1.1” 200 115 (urllib3.connectionpool:437)
2020-08-07 22:45:20 [DEBUG]: Seconds since last input: 0.015 (aw_watcher_afk.afk:79)
2020-08-07 22:45:25 [DEBUG]: Seconds since last input: 0.0 (aw_watcher_afk.afk:79)
2020-08-07 22:45:25 [DEBUG]: Starting new HTTP connection (1): 127.0.0.1:5600 (urllib3.connectionpool:225)
2020-08-07 22:45:25 [DEBUG]: http://127.0.0.1:5600 “POST /api/0/buckets/aw-watcher-afk_a/heartbeat?pulsetime=65.0 HTTP/1.1” 200 116 (urllib3.connectionpool:437)
2020-08-07 22:45:30 [DEBUG]: Seconds since last input: 0.0 (aw_watcher_afk.afk:79)
2020-08-07 22:45:35 [DEBUG]: Seconds since last input: 0.0 (aw_watcher_afk.afk:79)

#7

I unplugged all my USB devices and replugged them and now AFK is working.

Thanks for the assistance for putting me on th right track.

#8

For others it was an issue with my Razor Orbweaver. Which gets treated like a “joystick” where it constantly updates windows saying it’s centered which is why it wasn’t being registered as AFK.

Info on a potential fix, though it seems most people just unplug it when they aren’t using it.

1 Like
#9

That’s really interesting.

I wonder if it would be possible for aw-watcher-afk to ignore joysticks completely to avoid issues like this.