Getting started¶
Getting started with ActivityWatch is as easy as installing, starting it, and setting up autostart (if your installation method doesn’t do it for you).
Installation¶
Download and run the Windows installer for the latest release on GitHub.
Download the .dmg for the latest release from GitHub and drag the .app to your Applications folder as usual, then add it to your autostart applications.
Download the latest release from GitHub, unzip the archive into an appropriate directory, and add the aw-qt executable to your autostart applications.
Note
If you are using Arch Linux you can install ActivityWatch directly from the AUR.
Install it from the Play Store or using the APK from the aw-android releases page.
Note
Getting it to F-droid is a work-in-progress, see this PR.
Usage¶
The aw-qt application is the easiest way to use ActivityWatch. It creates a trayicon and automatically starts the server and the default watchers.
If you’ve installed by extracting a zip archive, simply run the ./aw-qt binary in the installation directory (either from your terminal or on Windows by double-clicking). You now should see an icon appear in your system tray.
You should now also have the web interface running at localhost:5600 and within a few minutes be able to view your data in the Activity view!
If you want more advanced ways to run ActivityWatch (including running it without aw-qt), check out the “Running” section of Installing from source.
Note
If you are running GNOME 3 or another desktop environment that does not support system trays, or if for some reason Qt can’t be used on your machine, read Running on GNOME.
Note
If you are using a proxy ActivityWatch might not work out of the box. To fix this you can set the environment variable NO_PROXY to include 127.0.0.1 before starting aw-qt. How to set an environment variable depends on your operating system; use Google if you are unsure how to do this.
Autostart¶
Note
Autostart is set up automatically by the Windows installer.
You can automatically start ActivityWatch when you log in by [adding it to your Login Items](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-items-automatically-when-you-log-in-mh15189/mac).
Note
Autostart is set up automatically for Arch Linux by the AUR package, if your desktop environment supports XDG Autostart.
You can set up autostart in other environments by adding [dex](https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/dex/) (to enable XDG autostart) or simply aw-qt to whatever place you put your startup applications (i3 config, etc).
Go to “Activities” or click the “Show Applications” button, search for “Startup Applications”. Click “Add” and enter a name and optionally a comment. For the command, enter the path to the aw-qt executable in the application directory. For example, /home/<your username>/.local/opt/activitywatch/aw-qt.
You probably want to make ActivityWatch start automatically on login using your operating system’s autostart settings.
Searching the web for “autostart application <your operating system>” should get you some good results that don’t take long. You want to start the aw-qt executable in the application directory.