What's new with WhatPulse?

WhatPulse 6.0 is a major release, with Web Insights bringing website activity into your stats for the first time. Alongside that, this release delivers a more flexible UI, improved exports, and a long list of stability and performance improvements, especially on Windows. This version lays the groundwork for deeper insights into how you actually use your computer, while making the core app more robust and pleasant to use day to day.

Web Insights: website activity tracking

Web Insights introduces website-level activity tracking through new browser extensions, integrating your browsing activity directly into WhatPulse.

• Track time spent and activity on websites, including keys, clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement
• View website activity alongside applications inside the WhatPulse app
• Associate website stats with profiles to separate work, personal, or other contexts
• Exclude specific websites or patterns from tracking
• Export your website activity data for deeper analysis or reporting
• Privacy-first by design:
  • Only website domains are tracked; never full URLs or page content
  • Browser extensions don't run in private or incognito mode
  • Website stats are private and never publicly visible on your profile

Exports include aggregated website activity such as active time and input effort per domain, with flexible time grouping and profile filtering. Web Insights is available as part of WhatPulse Premium.

UI and usability improvements

WhatPulse 6.0 makes the app more flexible and consistent across platforms:

• The main window is now fully resizable and remembers its size and position
• Application Activity charts are easier to navigate, including forward and backward day navigation
• Dialogs, buttons, and confirmations have been polished throughout the app
• New application sync status window with detailed logging
• Time series handling has been separated from pulsing, making sure the dashboard data is not interrupted

Stability and performance improvements

• Keyboard and mouse heatmaps now render in the background to avoid UI freezes
• Better detection of hardware, input devices, and network interfaces with newer Windows versions
• Multiple fixes for startup, shutdown, and input monitoring crashes
• More reliable updater behavior, especially during restarts
• Improved handling of unusual display and multi-monitor configurations
• Integrated Sentry crash reporting on Windows, respecting the existing bug reports setting. This should help us identify and fix issues much easier.

Overall, WhatPulse 6.0 should feel noticeably more stable and responsive, especially for long-running sessions.

Professional and managed deployments

For Professional users and enterprise environments, this release includes improvements aimed at managed and shared systems:

• Kiosk mode for per-computer data collection
• Support for custom data directories and managed settings
• Cleaner startup behavior for locked-down environments
• Improved installer options for automated deployments

You can now unlock a new badge by completing your profile. Head to Account → Profile to fill in your details and grab it.

Reminder

Today (Dec 3rd) is the last day to get 35% off the yearly Premium subscription. If you were planning to upgrade, now’s the moment.

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.