ActivityWatch - a more modern system monitor 🚀

Desktop is currently in v1.0.0

ActivityWatch is a lightweight, high-performance, and privacy-conscious desktop activity tracker & DFIR auditor that provides real-time monitoring of your system's performance, application dwell time, and detailed system telemetry. Built natively for Windows.

  • Cross-platform Windows 10 & 11: Native 64-bit desktop runtime with zero background bloat
  • Real-time Monitoring: Continuously measures active foreground window dwell & CPU/RAM usage
  • Application & Browser Tracking: Captures active URLs, domains, and multi-tab switches
  • Keystroke & Clipboard Auditing: Sensitive keyword masking & Fernet encrypted credentials
  • Terminal & Shell Auditing: Watches PowerShell PSReadLine, Git Bash history, and CLI invocations
  • Automated AI Closing Story: Daily OpenAI GPT timeline synthesis and DFIR report generation
Open on GitHub
v1.0.0 • ActivityWatch-Setup.exe (~25.8 MB) • 100% Free & Open Source

Features 🚀

Engineered from the ground up for high-fidelity desktop telemetry, privacy-first audits, and automated executive reporting.

Real-time Updates

Continuous background telemetry measuring active foreground dwell time, user focus transitions, and system idle state.

Application Monitoring

Comprehensive window title logging, application dwell duration tracking, and process execution distribution.

Keystroke & Clipboard Auditing

High-resolution activity tracking with automated keyword masking for passwords, auth tokens, and sensitive fields.

Browser URL & Tab Tracking

Native UI automation capturing active URLs and domains across Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox, Opera, and Arc.

Terminal & Shell Execution

Auditing for PowerShell PSReadLine history, Git Bash session logs, and CLI process invocations (git, python, docker).

AI Closing Story & Analytics

Automated OpenAI GPT summaries synthesizing work accomplishments, technical cases, and chronological timeline export.

Sneak Peek 👀

Inspect our high-resolution analytical telemetry views and executive closing stories.

Dashboard Real-time Metrics

The dashboard shows real-time analytics of your system performance, memory, CPU footprint, application dwell breakdown, and active timeline tracking.

ActivityWatch Dashboard — Real-time Telemetry (64-bit)
LIVE AUDITING
CPU Footprint 1.8% Optimal
Memory Usage 142 MB Low Overhead
Today's Focus Dwell 6h 48m 87% Active
Audited Events 1,428 SQLite Encrypted
Dwell Activity Timeline (Hours) Today • 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Top Application Focus Share
VS Code 44% (3h 02m)
Google Chrome 31% (2h 08m)
PowerShell / Terminal 16% (1h 05m)
Discord 9% (33m)

Multi-Track Gantt Timeline Explorer

The timeline inspector allows you to analyze chronological dwell intervals, active application ribbons, and multi-track task flow throughout your workday.

Tockler Gantt Timeline View — Chronological Inspection
2026-10-16 • 09:00 → 18:00
09:00 11:00 13:00 15:00 17:00 18:00
TASK TRACK
Architecture & DFIR Investigation
Telemetry Analysis
Closing Story Review
STATUS TRACK
● Focused (High Velocity)
○ Inactive / Idle
● Active Browsing
APP TRACK
VS Code
Chrome
PowerShell
Discord

Processes Monitoring & AI Executive Story

The processes monitoring view allows you to audit individual foreground processes, terminal sessions, and view your automated end-of-day narrative.

Process Watcher & AI Closing Story Synthesizer
GPT-4o Mini
Process Name PID Status Dwell Duration Sensitive Masking
Code.exe
14980 ● Active Focus 3h 02m 14s Enabled
chrome.exe
22104 ● Active Focus 2h 08m 45s Filtered
pwsh.exe
8944 ○ Background 1h 05m 12s PSReadLine Audited
AI Closing Story — Executive Summary (Generated 23:59 / Hotkey Ctrl+Shift+S)
Markdown & JSON Export Ready
"Today was characterized by intense engineering focus with 6h 48m of active productivity. Primary milestones included finalizing the desktop activity auditing engine, refactoring background UI Automation hooks, and verifying zero-leak sensitive keyword redaction. Terminal investigations confirmed clean test passes across all telemetry channels."