Syncing

Note

This feature is currently in beta and may change in future releases.

ActivityWatch has basic support for syncing your data across multiple devices using the aw-sync module since v0.13.0. It works by creating a “staging” database file in a device-specific folder in the sync directory (default is ~/ActivityWatchSync), which is then synced to the other devices using a file syncing tool of your choice (like Syncthing, rsync, Dropbox, or Google Drive). So aw-sync does not itself send data over the network, but instead relies on you using a file syncing tool to do that.

Android

Sync on Android is more limited than on desktop, and is currently disabled by default with no user-facing way to turn it on.

The Android app can push its own events into a sync directory (scoped to the app’s private storage: Android/data/net.activitywatch.android/files/sync/), but since Android 11 that directory is not accessible to other apps — so a file syncing tool like Syncthing cannot read from or write into it. In practice this means the app can produce its side of the sync data, but there is currently no supported way to push that data to other devices or to pull other devices’ data onto the phone. Automatic background sync used to run unconditionally every 15 minutes regardless of whether it could do anything useful; it is now gated behind a preference that defaults to off, so it no longer runs on fresh installs.

A proper setup flow — a settings toggle plus a way to pick a sync directory that’s actually accessible to a file syncing tool (e.g. via Android’s Storage Access Framework) — is planned but not yet built. Track progress in activitywatch#1357.

How to set up syncing

Note

We recommend you’ve switched to aw-server-rust before using the syncing feature, as it has better performance which will help with syncing large amounts of data. If you are still using the legacy aw-server (Python), you can find the documentation for switching to the Rust server in :docs:`migrating`.

For detailed instructions on how to use syncing, see the aw-sync README.