There are a few new things happening around WhatPulse in the last few weeks, ranging from long-requested quality-of-life improvements to an early preview of something much bigger. There are new community guidelines, and the privacy policy has been updated. Here's a rundown of everything:
Create and sync profiles across your computers
If you use Profiles to track projects, clients, study sessions, or different types of work, this update should make life a lot easier. You can now create and manage your Profiles directly on the website, and your WhatPulse desktop apps will automatically sync them.
No more manually recreating the same profile on every computer. Create it once, and start tracking time towards it everywhere.
Watch the demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YF1tkYfQVw
Preview: Meet Pulsar, your data analyst
For years, WhatPulse has been collecting detailed statistics about how you use your computer. Keystrokes, applications, websites, uptime, productivity habits, rankings - there's a lot of data in there.
The problem is that charts and dashboards don't always tell you what the data actually means. That's where Pulsar comes in 👇
(click to zoom in)
Pulsar is a new data analyst built directly into your WhatPulse dashboard. You can ask questions about your stats in plain English, and Pulsar will analyze your data and answer in seconds.
A few examples:
- “When am I most productive during the day?”
- “How does this week compare to last week?”
- “Which websites took the biggest chunk of my time?”
- “Show me my peak typing hours.”
- “How has my productivity changed over the last three months?”
It also understands follow-up questions naturally. Ask “which days were strongest?” after a weekly summary, and it'll know what you mean.
Built with privacy in mind
Pulsar is designed around the same privacy-first approach as the rest of WhatPulse. You control exactly what Pulsar can access through separate permission toggles for: Activity summaries, Application usage, Website usage, Computer details.
Disable a category, and Pulsar simply cannot query that data. By default, Pulsar doesn't have any access until you explicitly grant it, and you can revoke permissions at any time. Pulsar also doesn't check any of your data until you ask it a question, so it's not analyzing anything in the background without your knowledge.
Available now in preview
Pulsar is currently rolling out as a preview feature while I continue improving, potty-training it and learning what kinds of questions people actually want answered. During the preview, there's a monthly message allowance that resets on the 1st of each month.
Long term, Pulsar will likely become part of a separate WhatPulse Insights plan with higher usage limits, while still keeping some form of preview access available for existing users. I'm still figuring out the right balance there and seeing how much it costs for us to run. For now, I'd love for you to try it and share what you think.
Try Pulsar here: https://whatpulse.org/dashboard/insights
New community guidelines
The WhatPulse community has grown a lot over the years, and with more interaction between users, competitions, leagues, reviews, and community features on the way, it felt like the right time to formalize some clear community guidelines.
There have always been rules around fairness and cheating on the leaderboards, but the new guidelines expand on that and also set expectations for how we keep the community welcoming and enjoyable for everyone.
You can read the full guidelines here.
Privacy policy updates
I've also updated the privacy policy to reflect newer features like Web Insights and the AI provider used for Pulsar Insights.
As always, privacy remains a core part of how WhatPulse is designed. The updated policy clarifies what data is collected, how it's processed, and where third-party services are involved.
You can read the updated privacy policy here.