Time tagging and auto tagging

[Ryvix]

Hi there,

I’m wondering if you could maybe add some additional timelines above the other ones that let you manually and automatically tag time. I cannot find anything else that does this sort of thing for Linux besides ManicTime and it doesn’t even have auto tagging in Linux for some reason. I really like the other changes you’ve made though. Thanks for all your hard work!

Here are some videos of ManicTime doing these things:

They have a bunch of other videos on their channel as well that might be useful to see how it works.

I know you have categories now but I’m not finding it very useful in comparison to the ManicTime timeline to track time easily for a project. If you watch the auto tagging video it shows how useful it can be to be able to see where you’ve worked on a specific project in the timeline and then you can either use the autotags for specific urls or window titles or manually select and tag the time as well.

If I double click an activity in one of the existing timelines it will select that block of activity by highlighting it vertically. Or I can click and drag, or hold ctrl+double click or ctrl+drag to select and I can select multiple areas on the timeline at the same time. Then I can right click to add a tag manually. I can add notes to the tags. Then I can create a report that shows how much time is spent on each tag and shows the notes on them as well.

I can also right click on an activity such as Firefox for example, and create an auto tag out of it. I can also just add auto tags from scratch with various features. I can’t find anything really like it for Linux. I’ve looked for so long. The only reason I use Windows is for ManicTime and games and I’d really like to note have to use it for work if possible.

Another app I’ve found is called Timing but it’s only for Mac. It might just be even nicer than ManicTime. Almost makes me want to get a Mac.

Thanks!

[johan-bjareholt]

Manual time tagging is similar to what is proposed in this thread, which has a lot of votes.

Manually tracking away/offline-time

As a user who frequently leaves their computer for meetings, phone calls, etc, it would be nice to be able to define manual AFK activities so I can also log in more detail what I was doing. This way when I return to my computer, ActivityWatch can prompt me and ask “What were you doing for the last 42 minutes?” and I can select between defined afk activities. Meeting, Helping another person, phone call, etc.

We have not considered yet how we want to visualize it, but our timeline view certainly needs improvements.

I can also right click on an activity such as Firefox for example, and create an auto tag out of it. I can also just add auto tags from scratch with various features. I can’t find anything really like it for Linux. I’ve looked for so long. The only reason I use Windows is for ManicTime and games and I’d really like to note have to use it for work if possible.

We have considered how to more easily add categories (such as just pressing on the “Firefox” appname which then prompts you to create a new category or add it to an existing one), but before we do that we want some improvements to our categorization first (such as being able to only categorize on a specific field like “appname” or “title” so that’s what happens when you press it).

[domdeedom]

Hello,

I have been really enjoying using ActivityWatch and would like to build on the suggestions discussed here. The ManicTime second video shows exactly what I had in mind when I came here today. I work on content creation projects where I use many programs (Word, VS Code, Inkscape) and websites at the same time. The different projects use many of the same programs so auto tagging is not feasible. However, when I look back at the end of the month I can tell which project I was working on by the project specific file names that some websites/files have.

Assuming ManicTime’s approach is not feasible in the short-term, my suggestion is to have a way to auto-tag temporally related activity. For example, if I keep coming back to files/pages with “crossfire” in the name with less than a 15 minute delay, I should be able to group all that activity with a “crossfire” tag. This means if I go to check out something on a webpage with no identifiable connection to the project for 10 minutes between working on project-identifiable files, the whole time can be attributed to the project.

Thanks!

[4ellendger]

I’m working on a relevant application https://github.com/AlexanderMakarov/activitywatch-ets which produces something like on the screenshot below and in theory allows to track different projects.

(was ill that day so a lot of AFK intervals during the day)
“auto-tag temporally related activity” in my approach is to create separate “Strategy” like “zoom” or “huddle meeting” are implemented in the repo. If make these activities “self sufficient” then they would create result activities on its own. However I don’t export activities anyway, except stdout and “z999_activities” bucket so it is not ready yet.
Also my experience tells me that making activities only on some term in event doesn’t work good. For example chosen term may not be tracked/exist in some specific apps events (like messenger, Outlook, etc.) thus cutting time from the relevant “project”. Therefore I still trying to find more “general” approach in my application.