Active Window Logger is a Windows Application that lives in the system tray and monitors computer activity based on active window name. Many similar projects exist, but this one is open-source and aims to be as minimal as possible to facilitate customization. It inspects window titles and tracks mouse movement to evaluate activity, but key presses are never tracked to maximize security and prevent the app from getting falsely flagged as malware. This application is a single file and requires no installation.
Download: https://swharden.com/software/ActiveWindowLogger
- Single file EXE
- No installation required
- Log data as daily CSV files
- Application is a system tray icon
- Automatically start with Windows
- Totally separate analysis application
- Never monitor key presses to maximize security
- Download: Active Window Logger (Latest Release)
- ActivityWatch - A similar project with extensive features, but has a database structure that is complex and keeps getting silenced by my antivirus system.
- Tockler is a cross-platform application for tracking working time using active window and other metrics.
- OwlWindowLogger - A similar project using Python. Because of the weight of the Python interpreter, I prefer not to use this approach.
- Active Window Logger by Chinmay aims to log active windows but uses Visual Basic