Help needed applying config change to aw-watcher-window.toml

Support
1

I have a fresh install of v0.13.2 on MacOS Sequoia.

I am trying to disable window title tracking by setting exclude_title setting to true.
I have attempted that by doing the following:

  1. Click on aw-qt system tray, click ‘Open config folder’
  2. Open the aw-watcher-window/aw-watcher-window.toml with text editor.
  3. Modified #exclude_title = false to exclude_title = true.
  4. Quit ActivityWatch by clicking on aw-qt system tray, and clicking ‘Quit ActivityWatch’
  5. Restart the app.

I still see all the window title being recorded when I expected all titles to be ‘excluded’.
Log doesn’t show anything useful. What am I doing wrong?

is there anyway I can enable additional debug logs? Failing that, is there anyway I can modify the underlying python code to log more information?

2

Filed: https://github.com/ActivityWatch/activitywatch/issues/1141

3

Hi @rfk,

I’ve encountered similar issues when modifying the aw-watcher-window.toml file. Here are a few steps that have helped me ensure the changes take effect:

  1. Uncomment the Line: Ensure that the line exclude_title = true is not commented out. In TOML files, lines starting with # are considered comments and are ignored. So, the line should be:​
exclude_title = true
  1. Correct File Location: Double-check that you’re editing the correct aw-watcher-window.toml file. On macOS, the configuration files are typically located in ~/Library/Application Support/activitywatch/aw-watcher-window/.​
  2. Restart the Watcher: After making changes, it’s essential to restart the aw-watcher-window module. You can do this by quitting ActivityWatch completely and then restarting it.​
  3. Verify Changes: After restarting, monitor the logs to ensure that the exclude_title setting is recognized. You can run ActivityWatch from the terminal to view real-time logs:​
/Applications/ActivityWatch.app/Contents/MacOS/aw-qt

This will display logs in the terminal, allowing you to verify if the exclude_title setting is active.

If you’ve followed these steps and the issue persists, it might be worth checking if there are any overrides or additional configurations affecting the behavior. Let me know how it goes!

4

I have followed the steps, yet I still do not see the window titles being excluded.

One thing I did notice when running the aw-qt app is an odd ‘unrecognized arguments’ error:

...
2025-05-27 08:59:19 [INFO ]: aw-watcher-afk started  (aw_watcher_afk.afk:62)
usage: aw-watcher-window [-h] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--testing] [--exclude-title] [--exclude-titles EXCLUDE_TITLES [EXCLUDE_TITLES ...]] [--verbose] [--poll-time POLL_TIME] [--strategy {jxa,applescript,swift}]
aw-watcher-window: error: unrecognized arguments: -B -S -I -c from multiprocessing.resource_tracker import main;main(7)
usage: aw-watcher-window [-h] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--testing] [--exclude-title] [--exclude-titles EXCLUDE_TITLES [EXCLUDE_TITLES ...]] [--verbose] [--poll-time POLL_TIME] [--strategy {jxa,applescript,swift}]
aw-watcher-window: error: unrecognized arguments: --multiprocessing-fork tracker_fd=8 pipe_handle=10
2025-05-27 08:59:19 [INFO ]: Using swift strategy, calling out to swift binary  (aw_watcher_window.main:75)
...

Could this cause the other arguments to be ignored?