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installing-from-source.rst

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Installing from source

Here's the guide to installing ActivityWatch from source. If you are just looking to try it out, see the getting started guide instead.

Note

This is written for Linux and macOS. For Windows the build process is more complicated and we therefore suggest using the pre-built packages instead on that operating system.

Cloning the submodules

Since the ActivityWatch bundlerepo uses submodules, you first need to clone the submodules.

This can either be done at the cloning stage with:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ActivityWatch/activitywatch.git

Or afterwards (if you've already cloned normally) using:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Checking dependencies

You need to ensure you have:

  • Python 3.5 or later, check with python3 -V (required to build the core components)
  • Node 5 or higher, check with node -v and npm -v (required to build the web UI)

Using a virtualenv

You might want to set up a virtualenv so we don't install everything system-wide.

Note

This is currently required, but can be avoided with some minor modifications since some commands (notably those installing Python packages) will need root if not run in a virtualenv (sorry for not making it easier).

pip3 install --user virtualenv  # Assuming you don't already have it, you might want to use your systems package manager instead.
python3 -m venv venv

Now activate the virtualenv in your current shell session:

# For bash/zsh users:
source ./venv/bin/activate
# For fish users:
source ./venv/bin/activate.fish

Building and installing

Build and install everything into the virtualenv:

make build

Running

Now you should be able to start ActivityWatch from the terminal where you've activated the virtualenv. You have two options:

  1. Use the trayicon manager (Recommended for normal use)
    • Run from your terminal with: aw-qt
  2. Start each module separately (Recommended for developing)
    • Run from your terminal with: aw-server, aw-watcher-afk, and aw-watcher-window

Both methods take the --testing flag as a command line parameter to run in testing mode. This runs the server on a different port (5666) and uses a separate database file to avoid mixing your important data with your testing data.

Now everything should be running! Check out the web UI at http://localhost:5600/

If anything doesn't work, let us know!

Updating from source

First pull the latest version of the repo with git pull then get the updated submodules with git submodule update --init --recursive. All that's needed then is a make build.

If it doesn't work, you can first try to run make uninstall and then do a fresh make build. If that fails as well, remove the virtualenv and start over.

Please report all issues you might have so we can make things easier for future users.