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.

New Design​

Long overdue, we’ve completely overhauled the client design. From every page getting a new look, to new buttons, icons, and one of my favorites; a new tray menu.

Windows on the left, macOS on the right

Besides looking pretty, the new menu also has a glance at your current stats. You can also jump directly to a specific tab in the client or launch to your online profile.

Inside the client, everything’s updated. Here are two examples:

The keyboard heat map looks a lot nicer, sleeker, and is more responsive. Getting rid of the bulky keyboard image is also step one in getting to fully dynamic keyboard layouts (instead of the hardcoded and limited layout selections). In case you’re wondering what that message about Apples’ M1 support is about, here’s the help article.

New Website Design​

Not wanting to be left behind, our home page, downloads, and premium page, now also sport a better look. In the upcoming months, the entire website will be transformed into this new look.

Database Optimisations​

Some of you are still getting regular ‘critical database errors,’ and it’s annoying. Lose power at the wrong time, or experience a computer crash, and your history might’ve been lost. Most of 2020 went into making sure we minimize this. There are more integrity checks, and the client doesn’t freeze when loading big data sets, and more. One of my focuses in early 2021 is to get the database backups running again so that if something still happens — you’ll have a backup.

Permissions setup for macOS​

To operate within macOS, the client needs system permissions. To be precise, it needs Accessibility and Input Monitoring permissions. Previously, a not-so-smart popup told you that the permissions weren’t set up correctly. Now, it’ll guide you through the process:

WhatPulse 3.0 also brings macOS 11 (Big Sur) support.

Windows Network Counting​

The WhatPulse client uses Pcap to monitor the network traffic and count the traffic on a per-interface and per-application level. On Windows, we’ve used WinPcap for years, and it has some troubles on the newer versions of Windows 10. Counts might be off when you’re downloading at high speeds, or your network interface wasn’t supported. We’ve moved to Npcap, which promises to solve these issues.

Release Notes​

There are more changes in 3.0, like how auto pulsing now restarts, or high-resolution screens with scaling now works. Take a look at the release notes to learn about the smaller things!

Update now using the Check for Updates function, or download the client from our downloads page.

With the 2.9 beta 2 update, I’m happy to release a preview of the snap!

You can download it here: https://static.whatpulse.org/files/beta/whatpulse-linux-2.9b2_amd64.snap

Installation​

While we work on finalizing the snap, you’ll have to install it in development mode. Here’s how:

snap install whatpulse-linux-2.9b2_amd64.snap --devmode --dangerous

If WhatPulse has never run on your system before, you also need to run the ‘setup-input-permissions.sh’ script. This makes sure that the client can read your keyboard and mouse.

Known Issues​

• Network monitoring does not work yet

• The Operating Systems will not be detected properly (in the Overview tab)

• Some settings checkboxes might be black

• The client might not autostart with the system

Feedback​

Please let us know how it works for you; we feedback on this snap. Thanks!

Special thanks to Krzysztof and Zach for getting us this far!

Take a look:

Downloads​

You can find 2.9b2 in your update feed (enable beta versions and hit Check for Updates), but you can also find the installers here:

• https://static.whatpulse.org/files/beta/whatpulse-win-2.9b2.exe

• https://static.whatpulse.org/files/beta/whatpulse-mac-2.9b2.dmg

• https://static.whatpulse.org/files/beta/whatpulse-linux-2.9b2_amd64.snap

There’s More​

The interface changes are the biggest changes in 2.9b2, but it doesn’t stop there. Here’s an overview:

• Full redesign of the client, moving from 1990s design to the 21st century. All-new icons, buttons, heatmaps, and more!

• Sign Windows installer and client. Removes the “unknown publisher” warning.

• Improve rich tray menu usage significantly. Better hovering, icons, and more.

• Upgrade to Qt 5.15.

• Windows: Let Qt handle scaling on high DPI screens. This should significantly improve the presentation of the client on high DPI and scaled monitors.

Note on macOS 11​

I have the client working on macOS 11. The primary problem with the current client is the shift from OpenSSL to LibreSSL that Apple did. I’m looking for a way to make 1 client that will work on macOS 10.x and 11. If macOS 11 is released before I can make that happen, there will be 2 clients for macOS; 1 for 10.x and 1 for 11. Stay tuned!