Browser activity not showing in Activity view

[sbstratos79]

Raw data view has all the browser activity, but it doesn't show in the Browser tab in Activity view.
My issue is very similar to #67 except for the fact that I am not using Wayland. I am using Xorg and still facing this issue.

Librewolf 109.0, EndeavourOS.

[edobez]

I have the same problem on Vivaldi (using Chrome extension) on Windows.
Data is collected under "unknown" hostname and I can see that the bucket name misses the host name as suffix.

[marcinsmialek]

It can happen for many browsers - they may get recognized as different browser or there will be no matching rules in aw-webui

In case of Vivaldi, it's because Vivaldi is recognized as Chrome after they changed user agent to look like Chrome, not to be treated as second class citizen.

Reference:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-6-1/
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/miscellaneous/user-agent-brand-masking/
https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/

My current Vivaldi user agent string:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/122.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

The browser name is read as chrome
https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-watcher-web/blob/master/src/client.js#L27-L28

The bucket is named aw-watcher-web-chrome (without hostname), and not aw-watcher-web-vivaldi
ActivityWatch tries to match web bucket events with active window events. For VIvaldi users, it'll find neither aw-watcher-web-vivaldi bucket nor chrome.exe window events.
https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-webui/blob/master/src/queries.ts#L284
https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-webui/blob/master/src/queries.ts#L303

Here's how browser extension can check if it's running on Vivaldi or Chrome
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68659729/how-to-detect-clients-web-browser-is-vivaldi/77047611#77047611

I'm afraid that we'd need such extra check or a configuration field, so user can manually set the browser name rather than rely on the auto detection.
Manual setup looks the most promising, because it's flexible and people running niche browsers should be used to extra configuration steps.

Another solution would be to modify aw-webui web-window matching to treat Chrome-like browsers as Chrome, Firefox-like as Firefox and extend the execs list.
Or better, add config in base ActivityWatch rather than web extensions. Just now from the regular user's point of view, the browser list is hardcoded.

[swapnilraj]

I am using Brave and have the same issue.

This reply mentions there is a known workaround, what is it?

[cnra]

I have the same issue on Windows using Brave

[BelKed]

The problem with Brave Browser is already fixed in the latest version of aw-watcher-web, which hasn't been released yet.
You can build and install the fixed version yourself by following the steps in ActivityWatch/aw-watcher-web :)

[zRhyan]

I also have the same issue. And I installed the extension in Firefox and Vivadi, and both have the same problem to show the data in RAW DATA and not in BROWSER tab.

[thatmike1]

out of nowhere had this issue happen to me too on firefox. Is there a way to manually set a hostname for a bucket?

[BelKed]

• feat: add automatic & manual hostname configuration #158

---

The issue isn't with a missing hostname but rather with missing data from the window/AFK watcher. The activity recorded by the browser watcher needs to be paired with window data because the browser watcher logs activity even when the browser isn't in focus or actively being used.

[BelKed]

@sbstratos79 @edobez @marcinsmialek It's fixed in:

• feat: allow manually configuring the browser name #154

---

@zRhyan @thatmike1 Your issue is very likely different from the initial one, so I'd suggest you to open a new issue with exactly describing your problem. Or you can also join our community Discord if you need further help :)
https://discord.gg/vDskV9q

[renyuneyun]

The issue isn't with a missing hostname but rather with missing data from the window/AFK watcher. The activity recorded by the browser watcher needs to be paired with window data because the browser watcher logs activity even when the browser isn't in focus or actively being used.

I'd be curious about why are they not paired for many people?

For example, in my case, I have this timeline:

But nothing in "Browser" tab:

And all buckets are under the current hostname:

Some side information: I'm using 2e3s/awatcher because I'm on KDE+Wayland. But IIRC, the same problem happens on my other machine (macos).

[BelKed]

Categorisation for Zen browser is implemented but not released yet:
https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-webui/blob/master/src/queries.ts#L296

[renyuneyun]

Thanks for the info. Hope that will be released soon :)

(I also remember previously my Firefox also didn't work, at about 0.5-1 years ago. But it appears at least that for firefox on macos is working now.)