activitywatch: Can't categorize activities by URLs

Environment

Browser: Firefox 73.0.1 (64-bit) and Google Chrome Version 80.0.3987.122 (Official Build) (64-bit) Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 1909 OS Type: 64-bit

Debug info from plugin

Number of active tabs: 1
Tabs:
{
    "id": 20,
    "index": 0,
    "windowId": 109,
    "highlighted": true,
    "active": true,
    "attention": false,
    "pinned": false,
    "status": "complete",
    "hidden": false,
    "discarded": false,
    "incognito": false,
    "width": 1080,
    "height": 1824,
    "lastAccessed": 1582933480468,
    "audible": false,
    "mutedInfo": {
        "muted": false
    },
    "isArticle": false,
    "isInReaderMode": false,
    "sharingState": {
        "camera": false,
        "microphone": false
    },
    "successorTabId": -1,
    "url": "https://learn.javascript.ru/",
    "title": "Современный учебник JavaScript",
    "favIconUrl": "data:image/png;base64,..."
}

Appnames in the Watcher

image image

The issue

Hi, I use ActivityWatch with Chrome and Firefox extensions. But activities are only tracking by tabnames, not by URL in both browsers. For example, with these settings: image image or image i have no information about activity image but if I set like this: image my activties appear image

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: open
  • Created 4 years ago
  • Reactions: 18
  • Comments: 17 (5 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@ethanicus I’m afraid this has stalled a bit due to the difficulty in getting the required transforms right.

Right now, the general workaround is to either:

  1. not rely on URLs if possible
  2. install a browser extension that appends the domain or full URL to the window title (like: this for Firefox, and this for Chrome). That way, you can at least still use URLs for categorization.

I’ve noted that this is getting a bit untenable (and def an understandable source of confusion), so upping the priority a bit.

I agree that browsers are becoming a major part of people’s daily use, whether we admit it or not.

Although I find it frustrating that I can’t categorize most of my browsing time accurately, I will continue to use ActivityWatch and hope that this problem will be resolved. This issue is the only thing preventing it from being a “great” software as opposed to just “usable”. Post this reply to vote for it 😃

Tracking sites by domain names is a must-have feature. For what another purpose I need a extension for browser. I switch between different projects on different sites, and instead of seeing a site, I see a title. You have mentioned two extensions that add a full URL to the tab. If the can so, it means all extension have such information. Even without extension if I put a mouse over the tab I see the domain name.

Edited: I’ve checked you already have that information in the database, so why not implement that it’s proved a boost in popularity of the app. I spend about half of the working day in browser .

Can you please describe the technical problem in more detail?

Somebody may be able to help, and this is a really vital feature.

For one, half of my productive and nonproductive time is spent in browser, and putting URLs into tab titles will hurt the quality of life.

Until the problem is resolved, this can be added to the top of the documentation. It is hard to imagine a person who does not use a browser and who does not need to create categories by domains. I spent several hours to come to your comment. Someone else just won’t get to it and uninstall this great program.

2. install a browser extension that appends the domain or full URL to the window title (like: this for Firefox, and this for Chrome). That way, you can at least still use URLs for categorization.

@yutotakano That’s how it works right now.

The issue is that the url field is not in the events being categorized in the query. What’s needed is something to merge the web events with the window events, like worked on in https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-server-rust/pull/179.

So the only way to categorize things is through keywords? 😕

Is there any progress on this as of late? Or some workaround? It’s confusing to me that it shows youtube.com for instance as being used for ~15 minutes, and has it colored as the Videos category, and yet it doesn’t actually seem to show up anywhere on the charts. Would love to have this working.

Ahh, so this isn’t a feature yet. Unfortunately this means it’s useless for tracking, say, Reddit.com since it only counts it if it had Reddit in the tab name. Oh well, hoping it’ll get updated in the future.

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