How to Contribute

Did you come here to read what you should do before creating an issue? Scroll down!

Note: This is a work in progress, there is a lot we could do better so file a PR if you think we've missed something!

Getting started with development

To develop on ActivityWatch you'll first want to install from source. To do so, follow the guide in the documentation.

You might then want to read about the architecture and the data model.

If you want some code examples for how to write watchers or other types of clients, see the documentation for writing watchers.

There are many ways to contribute to ActivityWatch:

Help with testing by being an early user and reporting bugs.
Help with one of the issues labeled help wanted, these are especially suited for new contributors.
Help write documentation.
Help build the ecosystem.
- Examples: New watchers, tools to analyze data, tools to import data from other sources, etc.
Help fix bugs.
- See the issues in this repo.
Help implement new features.
- Want to start working on a new feature? Find the appropriate subrepo, if any, and see if there is anything that needs doing.

Most of the above will get you up on our contributor stats page as thanks!

Thanks for wanting to help out with squashing bugs and more by filing an issue.

There are a few things you might consider when filing your issue:

Which version of ActivityWatch are you running?
- NOTE: There is currently no good way to find this out, sorry about that.
What made the issue/bug appear? (steps to reproduce)
Include a logfile
- Log files can be found in different places, depending on platform:
  - macOS: ~/Library/Logs/activitywatch
  - Linux: ~/.cache/activitywatch/log
  - Windows: C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\activitywatch\activitywatch\Logs

If you have any questions, post on the forum or email one of the maintainers at: erik@bjareho.lt.