What's new with WhatPulse?

Well, that was fast. Here's a tiny update to fix a few glaring bugs.

Bug Fixes 🐛

• The status bar will now hide application sync when Upload application info is turned off, as it should.
• Per-application uptime in the Uptime → Applications table is showing the correct values again. The collected data is good, the presentation just wasn't.
• Fixed an issue where stuck modifier keys could cause false key-combination counts. Yes, they really do get stuck sometimes.

A small follow-up to 5.11 that adds a new status bar, makes application syncing easier to understand, and packs in a lot of stability fixes.

macOS Note: You might need to reset the Accessibility permissions for WhatPulse after updating. Should take only a minute, and there's a step by step guide in our help center.

New ✨

• A status bar with..the status of WhatPulse.
  • Shows the collector status with a colored dot.
  • Shows a rich tooltip with last pulse stats.
  • Shows pending applications that need syncing. You can click it to open the Applications Sync Status window.
  • You can turn the status bar on or off in Settings → Appearance.

Improvements 🛠️

• Application syncing is now a lot less noisy and a bit faster, especially on macOS
• Smarter upgrade handling & clearer version messages
  • When your database version is too new for the app, the error message now points to the minimum required version, instead of the generic “install the latest version”.
  • After an upgrade, the app notifies the website, which helps keep things in sync.
• Geek Window behaviour on multi-monitor setups
  • The Geek Window’s position handling has been tightened up to use pixel-perfect geometry persistence. Avoids the slow “drifting” effect when you open/close it multiple times.
• Updated the macOS app icon resources to 1024×1024, so icons look sharper on newer macOS versions and high-DPI displays.
• Large upload/download pulses and other big values now display with the correct numbers instead of being cut off. This had an effect on very large upload/download numbers that were not represented correctly in the web dashboard.

Fixes 🐞

• Lots of crash and shutdown safety fixes
• This update includes a broad batch of defensive fixes based on real-world crash reports, mostly happening during shutdown or edge cases when opening/closing windows quickly.

In short: if you ever ran into a crash while closing WhatPulse, reopening the Geek Window, 5.11.1 should feel noticeably more solid.

The WhatPulse Dashboard has been completely redesigned!

You'll now find three new pages: Overview, Productivity, and Leaderboards, that give you a faster, cleaner view of your activity and insights.

The old customizable widgets are gone (sorry to the few who loved them!), but these new dashboards are built for speed and clarity — and they’re already available in your account.

Give them a try →

Version 5.11 introduces one of the biggest updates in a while. You'll now see how much of your uptime is actually focused time, and for the first time ever, Linux users get full network stats support through a brand-new companion service.

💡 New: Focused Uptime

Your computer's uptime now tells a more accurate story. Focused Uptime shows how long you've actively used your computer — not just when it was powered on. It's perfect for seeing how much true "hands-on" time you spend each day.

The dashboard on our website will be updated (very) soon to make the most out of the focused time stats.

🐧 New: External PCap Service for Linux

Linux users can finally track their network traffic and bandwidth usage, just like on Windows and macOS! To make this possible, WhatPulse now works together with a small background companion called the External PCap Service.

This lightweight service securely captures network traffic and passes it to WhatPulse, allowing detailed network tracking. It's open-source, and the releases and documentation is available on GitHub.

👉 Download the External PCap Service on GitHub

⚙️ Quality of life & performance upgrades

A batch of refinements for everyone, across all platforms:

• Big performance boost when opening the main window, as content is now only loaded when necessary
• Application lists load faster — icons are now cached
• Consistent font and theme alignment with the website
• Installer now styled to match the app
• Simplified setup wizard layout
• Grace period added for Premium subscription renewals
• Dozens of small visual, tooltip, and spacing fixes
• General backend improvements for stability, performance, and security

🛠 Other Linux improvements

On top of network tracking, Linux users will notice smoother performance and better reliability all around:

• The AppImage can now update itself 🎉
• Fixed detection of left/right modifier keys (Alt, Ctrl, Shift)
• Fixed numpad Enter tracking and visual alignment
• Data files now live in ~/.local/share/WhatPulse, with automatic migration
• Better tooltip placement, spacing, and color on Linux

User profiles just got their big redesign! They've got all the same features as before, but now they're faster, easier to use, and finally friendly on mobile. 🚀

Here's what you'll see on your profile:

• Charts for the last few weeks
• Your computers, applications, badges, and pulses lists
• Easier profile text editing
• A polished layout to better showcase your stats

Your profile is your custom space on WhatPulse — now it's quicker to use and better to share. Go give yours a look! 👀

To keep the leaderboards consistent and transparent, participation now requires a public profile. That means your username and main stats need to be visible.

If your profile was private but you were on the leaderboards, the "Include me in public rankings" setting has been turned off. Want back in? Just make your profile public again.

You can still use the privacy settings to hide specific parts of your profile if you’d like. Only the basics (username + main stats) need to stay public for leaderboard participation.

Another round of pages has made the jump to the new website look! You’ll now find the updated design on:

• All leaderboard pages (keyboard/mouse, network, uptime, referrals)
• Teams and Countries leaderboards, and their profile pages
• About, Privacy Policy, Grand Totals page, and other misc pages

With these updates, most of the public-facing stats are now polished up. Only a handful of pages are left before the full site is refreshed.

We’ve just moved another batch of dashboard pages to the new website design! You’ll now see the new layout on:

• Computer & Profile settings
• Applications overview
• Online Backups
• Heatmap settings
• Weekly Reports archive

With these done, about 80% of the dashboard has now made the switch. The entire dashboard will be done in a few weeks - then the public statistics pages are up next.

This update brings a few quality-of-life improvements, bug fixes, and under-the-hood changes to improve stability and future compatibility.

🪄 Improvements

• The setup wizard now has its own window, making the setup and main interface simpler.
• The Geek Window stats %TotalDistance% and %TotalScrolls% now reflect account totals correctly, not just the current computer’s stats.
• The network time series for computers with multiple interfaces has been fixed to sum the data correctly, ensuring accurate historical data. This applies to the time series currently used in the Discord leaderboards.
• Fixed a few memory leaks when opening the main window repeatedly, which will slightly reduce memory usage over time.
• Fixed a few possible crashes when exiting WhatPulse with the main window still open. You were closing WhatPulse anyway, so these weren’t really a problem—but still worth fixing.

WhatPulse Professional updates

• Improved compatibility for Nuance PowerScribe.
• Streamlined the Professional interface by removing buttons that only apply to the Community version (such as share buttons, online profile link, change password, etc.).
• Clicking "Open Online Stats" now takes you to your Dashboard for a more integrated experience.
• The release notes link now points to the new whatpulse.pro/releasenotes page when there's a new version.

WhatPulse 5.10.1 is a patch release for 5.10, mainly fixing an issue where the app's database log file was growing a "bit" too much on some computers.

🔧 Improvements

• Re-enabled sending bug reports with incidents (only if the "Send bug and usage reports" option is enabled). This was disabled for a few releases while we got our backend up and running again, but we can now learn more about issues WhatPulse encounters outside of internal testing and beta periods—which will help us squash more bugs!
• Removed a few unnecessary logging statements that were filling up the log file.
• Updated the embedded SQLite3 version to improve performance and reduce the size of the database log file.
• Improved a few German translations, thanks to Cheesesus.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Updated Qt to 6.9.1, which fixes an error on Windows 10 version 1607 and earlier (from 2016) related to "Qt6Core.dll". Even though WhatPulse still works, please consider upgrading your Windows version anyway.
• Fixed a crash that could occur in certain scenarios with slow internet connections.