Work Snapshots

Take screenshots only when specific applications are running and group screenshots into work sessions.

Add tags to sessions to track time spent on projects or to look through progress.

Features

• Take screenshots evey few mins if any "interesting" application is running
  • A camera sound is played everytime a screenshot is taken
  • You can configure which applications count as "interesting"
• Add tags for different project to track time spent on them
• Manually disable recording even when "interesting" applications are running

Screenshots

The home page of the dashboard shows a set of "work sessions" which is a series of snapshots grouped together. So you know how long you worked on a specific thing at a time.

Each session can be tagged with a project.

You can also see your activity in aggregate in the "Stats" page. This shows you a "heatmap" of how active you were on each day. It also gives you a table to show you how much time you have spent on different projects.

By default, snapshots are taken when you are working on any applications that match a hardcoded list. You can disable recording even when those applications are open by clicking "Force Ignore Activity"

Problems

• Set up is manual (need to create two python virtual environments and a node environment)
• Windows setup is easier - mac setup is more convoluted
• Screenshots and process data is stored in plaintext! You have to make sure sensitive things aren't getting recorded.

Requires:

• AutoHotKey
• Python3
• Node

Tray

Uses autohotkey to add a tray icon to control enablement/disablement.

It also runs a timer to invoke python scripts to take screenshots and record windows/processes of interest.

Config for Tray

The tray component decides when you are doing something worth recording. It does this by checking if any programs are running that match a hardcoded list of programs. For me they are programs that I use for coding or graphics projects.

The tray component also has the output directory hardcoded. This must be updated before running.

Set up for Tray

cd tray
python -m venv .venv
.venv/Scripts/pip install -r requirements.txt

Then you can run the AutoHotKey script which will start monitoring your windows. If you have AutoHotKey installed, you should just be able to click on ConstantScreenshots.ahk script to launch it.

Tray-mac

tray-mac directory has a mac utility to run the same logic on macs but instead of writing to sqlite, it writes JSON files. The intention is for the server to be configured to detect these JSON files as "secondary" data.

This is obviously convoluted but I use it to share my work snapshots from my mac to my desktop.

To build the mac application run:

python -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
.venv/bin/python setup.py py2app -A

Note the created application needs "screen recording" priviliges so that it is given access to the window titles.

Server

Python server that serves as the backend for the dashboard where you can look through the work sessions/screenshots.

Config for Server

server/config.conf has a few different parameters that can be configured.

Some important things that must be changed first:

• Where the sqlite database should be
• Where the screenshots are stored

Set up for Server

cd server
python -m venv .venv
.venv/Scripts/pip install -r requirements.txt
# Also create the sqlite database
.venv/Scripts/python setup_db.py

Then you can start the server with:

.venv/Scripts/python -m bottle -b 0.0.0.0 main

UI

React based frontend to peruse work sessions and individual snapshots.

Set up for UI

cd ui
npm install
npm run build

FAQs

Can I request a feature? Can I send you a PR?

You can open an issue if you want ideas or pointers on how to implement something. It's very unlikely that I am going to implement it.

I am also unlikely to accept major PRs here. Feel free to fork this project and make your own version! You can share your forks in issues as well.