timetracker

A lightweight Windows desktop app that automatically tracks which applications you use and for how long. No manual input required — it runs in the background, logs every foreground window focus event to a local SQLite database, and lets you categorize and review your time through a built-in GUI.

Features

• Automatic tracking — polls the active foreground window every 3 seconds using native Windows APIs (user32, kernel32, psapi) via ctypes
• Local storage — all data stays on your machine in a single SQLite file (timetracker.db)
• Live view — shows the current active app, window title, and time in focus
• Review tab — browse all recorded events, filter by app/title, and assign categories and sub-categories with a filterable combobox
• Summary tab — aggregated time totals grouped by category and sub-category
• Zero dependencies — stdlib only (ctypes, sqlite3, tkinter, logging)

Requirements

• Windows 11 (or Windows 10)
• Python 3.11+

Usage

python main.py

Click Start Monitoring to begin tracking. The live panel updates every second. Use the Review tab to categorize events and the Summary tab to see time totals.

Data is saved to timetracker.db in the same directory as main.py.

Project Structure

timetracker/
├── tracker/
│   ├── app.py        # Main tkinter GUI (MainApp, StatusBar, ActiveWindowPanel)
│   ├── watcher.py    # Background polling thread (Watcher, get_active_window)
│   ├── db.py         # SQLite schema, queries, and migrations
│   ├── models.py     # WindowEvent dataclass
│   └── review.py     # EventsTab and SummaryTab widgets
├── main.py           # Entry point
└── requirements.txt

Database Schema

Single table window_events:

Column	Type	Description
id	INTEGER	Primary key
app_name	TEXT	Process name (e.g. chrome.exe)
window_title	TEXT	Foreground window title
started_at	TEXT	ISO 8601 timestamp
duration_seconds	INTEGER	Seconds of focus
category	TEXT	User-assigned category (nullable)
sub_category	TEXT	Optional sub-category (nullable)

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE for details.