I was on Arch Linux with Hyprland and wanted to know where my time was actually going. Every tracker I tried either needed a Python server running in the background, used 200MB of RAM, or just didn't work on Wayland at all. ActivityWatch is the obvious choice but it felt like overkill for something so simple. So I just built it myself. Started with the core idea: one binary, watches one thing, writes it locally. No server, no web UI, no accounts. The approach changed a lot while building it. I thought Wayland would be straightforward but every compositor handles the active window completely differently. Hyprland has its own IPC socket, KDE needs KWin scripting via qdbus6, GNOME literally blocks window inspection by default and needs a shell extension. I ended up writing a completely separate backend for each one. The thing I'm most proud of is the interpreted UI mode. HPR's UI is written in Slint and you can swap out the entire interface at runtime by editing a file in your config folder, no recompiling needed. No other tracker does anything close to this. Started as a personal tool, turned into something people actually asked for.

HPR - Human Pattern Recorder

A compiled activity tracker that actually works on wayland.

A compiled activity tracker that actually works on wayland.