Show HN: Workflow, a “Screen Time” App for Linux
gitlab.com
gitlab.com
Some technical details:
- Workflow is written in Python using GTK3. Don't panic about dependencies, it's already on Flathub
- As said above, it is a GUI for ActivityWatch, which does all the "dirty work" of monitoring the user's windows (and their titles) via `aw-watcher-window-*`.
- It has only been tested on Xorg so far due to some known ActivityWatch limitations, yet their team has just released a beta `aw-watcher-window-wayland` which should work on some desktops. GNOME window tracking on Wayland is already theoretically possible via introspection APIs, but I currently don't know if an implementation for ActivityWatch has been made.
- It is currently interfaced with ActivityWatch via its web REST APIs, and currently all parsing of information is done on the app side. This could be done very efficiently using their query API, but documentation for it is still too limited to rely on.
- Workflow is still at a very early stage of development, so it won't do much more than showing how much you used every app each day, and displaying a simple graph showing weekly usage per day. Most bugs have been sorted out for the 0.1.1 release, but the UX is still far from optimal.
- As for any FOSS software, contributions and PRs are extremely welcome. Opening an issue before starting coding, however, might save you a lot of time.
Constructive (or constructively destructive) feedback is appreciated.