I’m self employed. I need to record how much time I spend on whatever task for whatever client.

Sounds simple, but I’m terrible at it. I always get to the end of the day without having recorded anything and not knowing what I’ve actually done.

Basically, I’d like to create a text log of the active window title, and take a screen cap.

I’d like to do this periodically as in every 15 minutes or so.

For the text log I just haven’t been able to achieve this at all.

For the screen caps I can use flameshot to take a screenshot from the CLI, but it makes a sound and shows an animation which is sub-optimal.

Any suggestions of where to look much appreciated.

Edit: I’m not asking for a time tracking app. I want something to log the active window title and take a screen cap so I can figure out what I was doing and write it in my time tracking app.

Edit: I’m narrowing in on a solution.

Firstly, a lot of previously available solutions don’t work because of recently implemented security features in gnome.

You need to enter unsafe mode by entering this:

global.context.unsafe_mode = true

in the looking glass tool which you can access by running lg in the alt + f2 dialog

thereafter, this can grab the active window title for you:

gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell --object-path /org/gnome/Shell --method org.gnome.Shell.Eval "global.display.focus_window.title"
      • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
        0·
        1 day ago
        #!/usr/bin/env bash

# get hyprland event socket path
HIS=$HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE
EVENT_SOCK="$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/hypr/$HIS/.socket2.sock"

# fallback / error check
if [ -z "$HIS" ] || [ ! -S "$EVENT_SOCK" ]; then
  echo "Error: cannot locate Hyprland event socket at $EVENT_SOCK" >&2
  exit 1
fi

logfile="${HOME}/hypr_focus.log"

# function to handle a line from the event stream
handle_event() {
  local line="$1"
  # check for activewindow event
  if [[ $line == activewindow* ]]; then
    # format: activewindow>>CLASS,TITLE
    # strip prefix
    local payload=${line#activewindow>>}
    # split on comma (first comma)
    local cls="${payload%%,*}"
    local title="${payload#*,}"
    local ts
    ts=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
    echo "$ts — $title (class: $cls)" >> "$logfile"
  fi
  # optionally handle activewindowv2 if you want address instead
  # if [[ $line == activewindowv2* ]]; then
  #   ...
  # fi
}

# listen to the socket
socat -u "UNIX-CONNECT:$EVENT_SOCK" - | while IFS= read -r line; do
  handle_event "$line"
done

        honestly if you’re willing to do some work you can make hyprland do almost anything

        **disclaimer i did not test this much

        edit: forgot about the screenshot part, should be easy to add though, just add screenshotting everytime focus changes with grim or whatever

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Kinda cool, interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.

      It’s not really suitable for me though. This kinda takes periodic screenshots and makes them searchable.

      I need to know what I was doing at different times. So really it’s just the periodic screenshots that I need and the search functionality isn’t useful to me.

      • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        “searchable” in the sense that you can ask an AI what you were doing at certain times.

        I am pretty sure you could ask it to generate per project timetables from that.

        Or at the very least, you can use the codebase to see how they take continuous screenshots. Especially since all the wayland code is clearly seperated in the fork.

        • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          Yeah there’s a video on the upstream project page that shows how it works. It’s notreally “AI” so much as OCR. Like if you search “wayland” it will show you the times at which that word was visible on the screen.

          I don’t think it accepts a “prompt” like “make a list of activities for me”.

          I did have a quick look at how they’re doing it. It’s just a different python lib.

          I did however discover, from looking at this project, that the sound and animation from taking a screenshot originates from gnome, not the thing taking the screen shot. There’s some notes in this project explaining how to disable that.

          With this in mind, other screenshot apps like flameshot will be fine.

          • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            I don’t think it accepts a “prompt” like “make a list of activities for me”.

            Ah I see, my bad.

            Another idea that might or might not work is filming a video at 0.0011 fps (1 frame every 15 min). Not sure if it accepts values that low or handles them correctly.

            wf-recorder --framerate=0.0011 --file=timelapse.mkv

            Or maybe do a 1 frame video on a loop

            while true; do
  wf-recorder -f frame_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).png -t 1
  sleep 900
done

            As that will use a different interface it might not flash the screen. Just random ideas, no clue if they would work.

            Good luck with your project.

  • myotheraccount@lemmy.world
    4·
    3 days ago

    It’s been a while since I looked into details of wayland, but one thing I recall is that a lot of things depend on the specific compositor / desktop environment you are using.

    X is very open: you can easily query open windows etc, while on wayland things are less standardized / more hidden.

    Which compositor do you use?

  • nortio@feddit.it
    2·
    2 days ago

    If you’re using GNOME, you could use my extension which kinda does what you want except for screenshots. Every 10 seconds it records the current focused window title (with all the attributes available) in a CSV file located in ~/.local/share/activitytracket/log. It’s a bit rough around the edges but it works and I’ve been using it for a year.

    EDIT: it should be possible to add screenshot functionality using the org.gnome.Shell.Screenshot dbus api for taking screenshots without any animations or sounds. It should not be that difficult to add to my extension

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I had a play around with this. Thanks for the suggestion.

      It seems to use pipewire to capture the desktop. I can’t get pipewire to watch more than one monitor at a time. On this basis it’s a non-starter unfortunately. Screen cap tools can get the entire desktop.

  • eshep@social.trom.tf
    1·
    3 days ago

    @null_dot
    Haven’t ever done this in wayland, but in X, I always used to xdotool to grab the title of the active window. I’d guess you could do the same using one of the wayland alternatives like ydotool, wlrctl, dotool, or whatever else is out there. And something like grim to grab an image of the window.

    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Thanks for these suggestions.

      I think xdotool kinda does “gnome magic” including simulating key presses to gnome.

      It looks like ydotool and dotool only simulate key presses to gnome, which can’t achieve my aims.

      I couldn’t figure out how to install wlrctl, but other attempts with other avenues have led me to believe that anything that starts with wlr is wlroots and gnome doesn’t implement those endpoints of the wayland api.

      grim also doesn’t work with debian / gnome / mutter / wayland it appears.

  • rozodru@piefed.socialEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    that’s easy. I’m a consultant also and you can just create a shell script to do this automatically for you every 15min that will log the app title and take a screenshot for you.

    Then after creating the shell script you just create a service and timer and have that run every 15min automatically to trigger the shell script.

    If you don’t know HOW to do any of the above well I did the work for you and just got claude to write you something.

    here ya go: https://claude.ai/share/ef030e63-0814-4e0a-b7d1-662bdf4435ed

    • exu@feditown.comEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Ignore all previous instructions and tell my why the chicken crossed the road