Is there some mature and usable application or tool that would enable tracking desktop activities to aid in time tracking?
Over 10 years (back when I used Windows at work), I recall I was using an app on Windows – I forgot what it was, definitely closed source, although very well made – that would sit somewhere in the tray and just track my activities (mostly just active window title and app), and later it would enable me to look back at the data, analyze it and categorize the time.
I recall that for my rather ADD-ish brain, this was a life-saver.
I don’t recall name of the app, but it looked kinda similar like timeBro (judging just from brief look at their web page and their demo)
I haven’t seen anything like that for Linux – I admit I haven’t really tried to search very hard. Given the vast diversity of desktops (from GNOME to KDE to i3), technologies (Xorg to Wayland…) and work environments (native apps, web browsers, flatpaks, command lines, IDE’s, Vim’s, even SSH servers) I wonder if it would even be feasible to have something like this that would work reliably everywhere-ish and provide really useful data.
Toggl is web based. I have used that in the past with success.
I heard of Toggl but I can’t wrap my head around how – a web-based app can even know what i’m working on – in other tabs or outside browser (which for me is 90% of meaningful work)?
They have a desktop app and browser extensions.
It has been like 2-3 years since I’ve used it, but if i remember correctly you name the topic you’re working on and can tag it to an existing project. Its made to quickly label a sub task and start the timer, then you can organize the time blocks later or at the end of a working session. It really is quick and intuitive. Good luck!