selfwatch

Selfwatch is a program that monitors how you use your computer. It's inspired by selfspy. It tracks the number of keys pressed over time using the X11 RECORD extension on Linux. It comes with a handy dashboard to visualize your activity.

Usage

> selfwatch --help

Usage of selfwatch:
  -config string
    	Path to json config file (default "selfwatch.json")

Web Mode

Selfwatch includes a built-in web server that provides a dashboard for visualizing your typing activity. The dashboard displays hourly, daily bar graphs and a GitHub style contribution grid showing a heatmap for the year.

The web interface doens't start with the record daemon so you aren't leaking data about your typing just because you are recording.

Start it with:

> selfwatch web [address]

The default address is localhost:8080. You can specify a different address:

> selfwatch web localhost:9000
> selfwatch web 0.0.0.0:8080

The web interface will use your config file to locate the database to visualize. The NewDayHour will apply to any daily aggregation.

Config

The following options can be specified in the configuration json file:

• DbName - The name of the sqlite database to load to store data (default: "~/.selfwatch/selfwatch.db")
• RemoteUrl - A URL to flush key press counts to every RemoteFlushDelay seconds. Data is encoded as JSON and sent as a post request. It's formatted as an array of arrays: [id, "YYYY:DD:MM HH:MM:SS", count]
• RemoteFlushDelay - How long to wait between flushing key counts to remote server, default 60
• SyncDelay - How long to buffer key counts in memory before flushing to database (application switches will trigger immediate flush)
• NewDayHour - The hour (0-23) when a new day starts for statistics purposes (default: 4). Useful if you work late nights and want activity after midnight counted as part of the previous day

About

Author: Leaf Corcoran (leafo) (@moonscript)
Email: leafot@gmail.com
Homepage: http://leafo.net
License: MIT, Copyright (C) 2025 by Leaf Corcoran