Translations (Client v3.5)​

This is by far the biggest thing. The client can now support multiple languages. Select the language in the General Settings:

I am starting with Dutch and adding more languages soon. Here’s also where I could use your help. If you would like to see the client in your native language for yourself and people that speak the same language — help us out!

I’ve open-sourced the language files and written documentation about how to contribute. You can find all information here: https://github.com/whatpulse/client-translations

Shout out to Richard Gráčik, who has already started on a Slovakian translation!

Support for Windows 11 and macOS 12 (Client v3.5)​

Minor change, but I wanted to highlight it. The client will now correctly recognize Windows 11 that came out a week ago. In anticipation of the release of macOS 12 (Monterey), the client also supports it when it comes out.

Dark & Light Mode Updates (Client v3.5)​

While the client does not have a dark mode yet, it handles dark and light themes a lot better now. Both on Windows and macOS:

Switching themes on Windows (left) and macOS (right)

The application icon has also had a few minor tweaks that will make sure it looks good on both light and dark mode:

Application icon on light (Windows, left) and dark (macOS, right) mode

Viewing & Exporting Data (Client v3.5)​

A few things around viewing and exporting data. On every page in the client where you have a time selection (heat maps, application history, etc.) — there’s now the option to select all your data using the all button:

If you have a lot of history, it could take a couple of seconds to load. The spinner will tell you whether it’s still loading or if it’s done. :-)

And on popular demand, the Export Wizard can now group by the hour for input and application uptime. The resulting CSV file has your data split by the hour. Want a CSV with the number of keys of last week between 8:00 and 8:59? Done.

There were also a few Export menu’s missing the Export Wizard option: that’s been remedied.

Download all Data (Website)​

Adding on the data export features, there is now a button called Download All Your Data inside your Account Settings. When you click this button, all the data in your account is gathered and put into a zip file. Once that process is done, you will get an email with a link to the zip file.

Download all your data from the website

It can take a few minutes to process and send the email — contact us if it doesn’t arrive in an hour.

Social Apps Update (Website)​

Since the launch of the Social Apps, there have been 100s of application profile submissions. It’s been incredible to see applications get more information on the website and how people have been using it to find alternative apps or simply get more info about their apps.

One barrier for submitting was the requirement for a logo. I initially added the logo as a requirement at first to get the application profile complete at the first submission. But a lot of you have asked to remove it — so here we go! You can now submit application profile improvements without having to look for a logo.

By the way — the free sticker promotion is still active. :-)

Other Stuff​

• Client v3.4 fixed the sharing of keyboard and mouse heat maps

• Client v3.5 automatically starts online back-ups within 5 seconds, instead of waiting for a manual start

• Client v3.5 fixed opening the browser for the login process. This only happened for a handful of people.

A couple of weeks ago, WhatPulse 3.3 was released onto the update feed. I didn’t have time to write about it until now, so here’s the update post!

Online Database Backups​

You get a new computer and you want to migrate, or your computer has crashed and you need to reinstall it. Things happen. One of the annoying things that come along with that, is that your local WhatPulse database is gone (unless you made backups of your Data Directory).

Starting WhatPulse 3.3, the client has a built-in online backup feature. This will allow the client to make backups of your local database and put it somewhere safe. That somewhere safe is in the cloud, encrypted by default, and only accessible by your account. It’s a Premium feature, mostly because it’s not free for us to host these backups.

Backup​

There’s a new setting in the client that controls it (enabled by default), where the client will ask you through a popup when you start the client, or through a message on the Overview tab, to create a backup every week.

Restore​

When you log into the client, it will check whether there are any backups for your account and offer to restore it. After downloading the database, the client will restart and have all your history back.

Management​

The backups can be managed through your Dashboard. Download them manually, or delete them from here.

Dashboard — Online Database Backups

More Info​

Find more info about the feature (description, walkthroughs, and videos) in the Help Center.

Windows & Command Keys​

The online database backup isn’t the only new thing in 3.3. You’ve asked for it, and now the keyboard heat map will show you the usage of the Windows key and macOS command keys:

That goes both for the heat map view and the table view. Previously, the keys were categorized as “Unknown”.

Other Things​

There was a ton of code maintenance in 3.3 also, meaning certain things respond quicker, there was a condition where opening the Geek Window on startup would crash the client, and a ton of micro bugs were fixed.

Full release notes here: https://whatpulse.org/releasenotes/3.3/

Get version 3.3 using the Check for Updates button, or download it from https://whatpulse.org/downloads/

Input History — Table View​

First up is a new table view on the Input History page. The chart on the same page is an easy way to see how you’ve done comparatively with other days, weeks, or months — but you’ve been asking for a more detailed view.

This view allows you to look at your input history grouped by hour, day, week, month, and even by year. While this data was already available when you export the input history, this is an easier to way too at it.

Lost your Geek Window?​

It can happen. Too many screens, maybe you’ve not pinned it to be on top. Now, there’s an easy way to find it again:

Release Notes​

• NEW Add a table view on the Input History tab. Here you can list key and click counts grouped by hour, day, week, month, or year. Input history is a Premium feature.

• NEW Add a geek window setting to call it to center and reset its coordinates.

• NEW Add a shortcut to the account tab in the tray menu.

• IMPROVED Bring client into focus when authorization is done on the website.

• IMPROVED Make it easier to switch between an analytics widget and table view by using icons, instead of a dropdown.

• FIXED Fix sporadic empty account or login window.

https://whatpulse.org/releasenotes/3.2/

Social Applications​

After a lot of work on both the client and website, we’re finally ready to take our application focus to another level. Social Applications allows us to start curating the application information that we have gathered from the clients that have this enabled. For one, we can give them better names, add a description of what the app does, add a category and tags, and discover similar applications.

The new application profile

As we have thousands of apps and discover new ones every day, curation is continuous. We’re kickstarting the process ourselves by tackling the top apps, and you can also earn credit by contributing to an application improvement. Hit the Improve button of your favorite apps and add the details for review, and you’ll be cast in stone on the application profile page as the contributor. :-)

Contribute to an application profile

When you submit an improvement, it goes into a review, and we’ll let you know once it’s accepted. To sweeten the pot, anyone that submits an improvement and it gets accepted can apply to get a few of these awesome stickers. We’ll do this for the foreseeable future (we’ve got a ton!), and you can find the instructions in the notification email that your submission is accepted.

The best part about the Social Applications feature are the possibilities. Expect to see the time spent in applications in your Weekly Update soon. We could also list similar applications if you’re looking for an alternative. And my favorite: we can start classifying time spent as productive, distracting, or entertaining. Stay tuned for some awesome things!

Linux Client​

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, we had to pull the Linux client from our downloads because it was getting too hard to maintain and make it work on all the different Linux distributions. I posted a call for help, and help arrived! We started looking into universal packages and landed on Snapcraft. After Krzysztof Setlak and Zach Bloomquist spent months building and testing, it’s finally here! Our gratitude for them is big. :-)

Linux client running on Ubuntu, via the snap

The Snapcraft package is built on version 3.1, and we’ve made it so that we can easily update it whenever we release a new version. Because WhatPulse monitors your computer, we won’t be able to release it as a sandboxed snap. So, for now, it’s created with devmode, and we’ll switch to a classic snap down the road.

Our download page links to the snapcraft website; check it out! The download link and installation instructions are listed there.

After taking a few weeks of feedback on the recent 3.0 launch, I’ve just made version 3.1 available! This is a maintenance release, so a lot of fixes. Here’s the summary:

Fixed ‘Network access is disabled’ message​

When a network change occurred on your computer (connected to a VPN, changed wifi networks, etc.), the client would no longer communicate with the website, giving you that error. This was a Qt problem, and the Qt version was upgraded in 3.1 to solve this.

Windows: Opening the window on start-up (or freezing up)​

After upgrading to 3.0, the client had two start-up items on Windows, making it start twice. The second time you start WhatPulse, it opens up the client window, instead of launching a duplicate client. That’s why you might’ve seen the client window opening up, even if you disabled that option.

If the timing was right, this could also cause the client to freeze up, and take 100% CPU, needing to be forcefully killed. This should also be fixed with 3.1.

Windows: Icon Scaling​

While the interface itself looked great, the icons used in the menus didn’t look too good (horrible) when you had scaling set to something higher than 120%. This has now been fixed, and the client should now be fully compatible with both high resolution screens and scaling.

Minor things​

There are also other minor changes in 3.1, check out the release notes for the full list.