What's new with WhatPulse?

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.

🚀 New

Multi-display mouse heat map support

Mouse clicks are now tracked per screen, so you can view heat maps across all your monitors or zoom in on a specific one. Heat map rendering also got a visual refresh.

Application Activity chart scrolling

You can now scroll beyond the default 24-hour view in the application activity chart, making it easier to look back in time.

Dark theme update

The dark mode has been refreshed to match the new WhatPulse website design—cleaner, sharper, and easier on the eyes.

🔧 Improvements

Separate internet traffic counting

WhatPulse now distinguishes internet traffic from local traffic. The UI update to show this is coming later, but exports already include it.

Full PCAP restored for network stats

Network tracking is now more accurate after dropping unreliable OS counters and returning to full packet capture. We also increased the packet buffer to 256MB, enabled immediate mode, and improved NIC buffering across platforms. This allows tracking up to 8 to 10Gbit/s of traffic.

Database loading and reliability

The app loads faster and handles large data better thanks to a new database engine, smarter integrity checks, and a larger cache. It now checks for database structure issues weekly and can auto-recover from corruption.

More

• Game controllers: Controllers from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, 8BitDo, and others now map correctly. Buttons no longer show up swapped or missing—WhatPulse detects the controller and applies the right layout automatically.
• Keyboard heat map: Apps are now grouped more logically (preventing duplicates), and tooltips show the full app paths.
• More readiness checks and state tracking were added to avoid duplicate events and rare startup crashes after waking from sleep.
• Network requests now have timeouts and the app resets its busy state if a request hangs.
• WhatPulse now runs on Qt 6.8.3 on Windows and macOS for improved stability and access to new platform features.
• Linux: Improved theme detection, fixed dragging on GNOME, corrected toolbar button placement, and added display detection for mouse tracking.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Windows: Fixed an issue where some installations triggered a UAC prompt during update checks.
• Fixed an issue where deleting a local profile added its stats to the global total (duplicating the stats).
• Fixed a visual issue where the update didn’t appear to complete if there was also an update to the MaintenanceTool (the updater). A manual restart was required to see the new version.
• Mouse details page: fixed lingering mouse button data when switching time ranges, even if the new range had no data.
• Clicks on the coordinates 0,0 have been exiled for good. No more mouse heat map only in the top left corner.
• Uptime chart no longer stretches the Y-axis when there's no data for a day.
• Fixed a styling issue where startup error messages were unreadable if the app failed badly.
• Fixed network time series on systems with multiple adapters—data is now grouped by hour/day correctly (feature not yet used in the app).
• Fixed the Swagger interface so the HTML renders properly instead of returning only JSON headers.

🚀 New

• Dark mode refresh: The dark theme now matches the new WhatPulse website style—sleek, sharp, and a bit easier on the eyes.

🔧 Improvements

• Keyboard heat map: Applications are now grouped properly by name (instead of showing the same app multiple times), and you'll see tooltips showing full app paths.
• The mouse heat map now refreshes instantly when your monitor setup changes—no restart needed.
• Better handling of extremely slow network requests: HTTP requests now have a timeout to avoid issues if something hangs, and we reset the app's busy state if it stalls.
• Database file size: We now explicitly checkpoint the database on startup and exit to keep the WAL file in check. A full integrity check is always performed after a database restore.

🐛 Bug fixes

• If something goes very wrong when WhatPulse starts, the popup message used to be styled wrong, and you couldn't read it. Now, you can.
• Fix for network time series on systems with multiple network adapters: it now groups by hour and day correctly, so you get accurate data. Note: the network time series isn't used in the app yet, but it's a step towards future features.

✨ New

• Add internet network traffic numbers to the exported csv via the Export Wizard, to compare total and internet traffic.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Windows: Fix a few scenarios where the mouse heat map was too big, when the display is scaled.
• Fix the Swagger UI and index on the Client API web server; it was returning the JSON header on all requests, making the HTML not render.
• Numerous updates to improve data loading speeds for larger datasets.

🚀 New

Game controller support with vendor-specific mappings

We've added smarter support for gamepads from different manufacturers. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and 8BitDo controllers (and others) now have proper button layouts, fixing swapped buttons and inconsistent mappings. The system identifies each controller and applies the right configuration automagically.

🔧 Improvements

Faster interface & database loading

Database performance has been significantly improved with a new engine, smarter integrity checks, and a larger cache. App launches are faster, and you'll notice fewer (to none at all) interface slowdowns when opening the window.

Database reliability improvements

When the WhatPulse app has a lot of local data, it's possible that an incident with your computer could bork WhatPulses' database. We've introduced structural issue detections, and integrity checks now run once every 7 days, and problematic database issues are now automagically recovered.

Mouse heatmap rendering and export improvements

The mouse heatmap now supports scaled displays on Windows, recalculates more efficiently & quickly with a lot of data, zooms more smoothly, and has a some tiny visual improvements. We've also limited heat map exports to a more usable size (800px).

🐛 Bug Fixes

• The computer uptime chart no longer stretches the Y-axis to 24 hours when there's no data for a given day.
• Windows: Certain installations got a UAC prompt when WhatPulse wanted to check for updates. Not anymore.
• Fixed duplicating local stats when deleting profiles. The stats of the to-be-deleted profile were added on top of the global stats.
• Fixed an issue where it looked like it wasn't updating WhatPulse when there was also an update to the MaintenanceTool (the updater). The process would bring the old version of WhatPulse up when it was still updating it, and only a manual restart would show you the new version.

This release focuses on making WhatPulse more stable, faster, and accurate—especially for users with larger databases or custom hardware setups. Let us know how it's working for you!

🚀 New

Mouse Heat Map gets smarter (and prettier ✨)

Your heat maps now know which screen you clicked on! Multi-display setups are now properly drawn, letting you see the big picture - but also zoom in to a specific screen to see more details.

Smooth scrolling in the Application Activity chart

The activity chart now scrolls like butter to let you scroll back in time to see your application activity beyond the default 24 hour window.

Internet traffic counting

We’ve started counting internet traffic separately in your bandwidth stats, to know how much internal vs internet traffic your computers are doing. Adding those stats to the interface will follow later.

🔧 Improvements

Gamepad counting improvements

WhatPulse is now better handling gamepads events, and button presses and releases are handled the same way as mouse clicks and keyboard taps. This also improves button counting on some gamepads (i.e. the PS controller), where sometimes repeated buttons could be skipped in the counts. Note: expect more work here, as we need to account for other specific controllers (like the Nintendo Pro controller).

Better network monitoring

Back to full PCAP we go! That means more accurate traffic tracking, cleaner network stats, and ditching the old network interface counters. It turned out that various network interfaces had an unreliable way of keeping track of their counters.

We also increased the packet buffer to 256MB, enabled immediate mode, and fixed NIC buffering across platforms. For the non-geeks: this means WhatPulse can count up to 10Gbit per second. 🏎️

Cleaner, more spacious layout

We reduced margins around the content widgets and tweaked borders to make better use of your screen. More data, less dead space.

Added stack trace logs

The app now catches crashes like segfaults, aborts, and more, and prints a helpful stack trace in the logs. We hope you never see it, but if you do, the logs are a little more helpful with troubleshooting crash issues.

Qt 6.8.3 on Windows and macOS

We’ve upgraded to Qt 6.8.3, giving the app more stability, performance, and shiny new under-the-hood features on Windows and macOS. It's like a fresh coat of paint and a turbo boost at the same time.

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Mouse details page: Fixed an issue where the mouse buttons stuck around when switching time windows, even when they didn’t have any data for the new time selection.
• Clicks on the coordinates 0,0 have been exiled for good.

Improved sleep & wake behavior

Again? No, more! We’ve added more readiness checks and state tracking to avoid duplicate events. This means less resource usage when your computer wakes up from a deserved sleep, and in same very rare cases, waking up could cause WhatPulse to crash - not anymore.

Linux gets some love

Fixed light and dark theme detection, dragging the window on Gnome, toolbar button placement, and added support for detecting displays in mouse tracking.

• 🐞 Heat Map Fix: Resolved click coordinate tracking issues affecting Windows 10 users with certain mouse hardware (mostly trackpads).
• 🐞 Numpad Detection Fix: Fixed numeric keypad input recognition affecting Windows 10 users.
• 🆕 Numpad Enter Support: Restored the numpad Enter key in the heat map display on Windows.

New: 🎮 Gamepad support

Gaming clicks just leveled up! Button presses on gamepads now count toward your click stats. You can see the usage of individual gamepad buttons (A, B, L1, etc.) on the details page of the mouse stats.

Additionally, WhatPulse now distinguishes between multiple mouse buttons. Left, Middle, Right, and Other are still tracked, but you'll also see "Button x" labels for any additional buttons we can identify.

New: ⚙️ A new input engine for Windows

Faster, more secure, and more efficient—plus better support for devices like gamepads! Previously, greedy apps and games (like GTA) could block WhatPulse from detecting inputs, meaning your gaming session wasn’t counted. Not anymore!

🆕 Other Exciting Features

• Redesigned submenu: Navigation is now clearer, making it more obvious when a tab has multiple pages.
• New titlebar: The main window features an updated titlebar displaying useful information, including your WhatPulse Premium status.
• Keyboard shortcuts: You can now close the main window using Cmd + W (macOS) or Ctrl + W (Windows & Linux) for quicker navigation.
• Total column for network tables: Easily see the total data sent and received at a glance.

🚀 Performance & stability improvements

• The WhatPulse app interface is now 1200% faster (yes, we tested it), thanks to extensive optimizations. Opening the app and interacting with it is significantly smoother.
• Auto-pulsing has been reworked to handle internet disconnects more gracefully. It now retries exponentially (2 min, 4 min, 8 min, etc.), continuing hourly instead of disabling auto-pulse.
• A new stats collector monitor ensures continuous data collection, even after online backups, computer sleep, or other interruptions.
• Windows sleep/wake event handling improved, ensuring data collection resumes properly after waking up.
• Windows watchdog service enhanced for more consistent performance across Windows versions.

 macOS specific enhancements

• Tracking for applications in /Library, where many modern helper apps reside, and special support for Cryptex volumes - the place where apps like Safari live these days. This also means Safari stats are now counted on the website.
• Full support for Apple's latest macOS (Sequoia) release, and WhatPulse now recognizes the 2024 line-up of new Macs (i.e. the Mac Mini M4).
• Improved macOS app vendor identification, now used on the website.
• Corrected app icons for certain macOS applications.
• Improved network interface detection, preventing misidentification of Wi-Fi adapters as Ethernet.

🛠️ General improvements

• Advanced Raw Input Toggle: Older computers experiencing latency with raw input can now disable it, switching to a lower-precision method.
• GeoIP.dat file updates optimized to download only when necessary.
• Improved Windows version detection for better accuracy.
• Higher-resolution app icons now uploaded to the website.
• Gradual reduction of authorization checks for smoother logins.
• If NPCAP wasn't installed, updates won't nag you about it anymore.
• WhatPulse Professional now disables auto-updates so organizations have full update control.

🐛 Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash on quick navigation after launching the app.
• Fixed application paths longer than 129 characters.
• Geek Window settings no longer save excessively when moving labels.
• Improved error handling for WhatPulseMaintenanceTool issues.
• Translated tray icon tooltips.
• Profiles toggle removed from tray menu for non-Premium users.