Application Logger is a small standalone Windows application that logs the applications the current user is running at any time, adding them to a log file every time the user changes focus.
I created this because I wanted to have a log of all the applications I've been using, and what file they had open, for statistical purposes. While there are some applications and online services that already do this for you (e.g. RescueTime), no other service had the level of flexibility and raw access to data I wanted so I decided to write this myself.
The result is an application that writes data to a raw, tab-separated log file.
Download ApplicationLogger.exe. Copy it somewhere, and then run it. It will add itself to the system tray, and start logging the applications you run.
By default, it will also run at Windows startup. You can disable this behavior by right-clicking on its tray icon and deselecting that option.
After it is ran for the first time, it will also write a config file to its folder. This file has several options that dictate how the application runs; open the file for more information.
By default, it polls the active application every 0.5 seconds, and assumes the user to be away if no user input has been performed for 10 minutes.
The log file contains these fields, separated by a tab:
- Time where an event was recorded
- Event type
app::focus: an application gained focus.status::idle: the user is now idle. Time is the time of the last known interaction.status::stop: logging has stopped, either because the application has quit, the user has stopped logging, or because the day has ended.status::end-of-day: an app focus event has occurred in a different day and a different log file, so this will be the last event in that specific log file; the app focus event will be added to the next file.
- Machine name
- Process name
- Full process path
- Main process window title (if possible)
These are some examples of log lines:
2014-12-11T12:55:12.3908117-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE TweetDeck C:\Program Files (x86)\Twitter\TweetDeck\TweetDeck.exe TweetDeck
2014-12-11T13:00:39.6875381-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE chrome C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe Showtime Anytime app comes to Xbox One | Polygon - Google Chrome
2014-12-11T13:29:55.1320650-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE firefox C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe C# snippets - Google Docs - Mozilla Firefox
2014-12-11T13:33:14.0059504-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE notepad++ C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe D:\apps\logger\ApplicationLogger.cfg - Notepad++ [Administrator]
2014-12-11T13:37:15.4130887-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE explorer C:\Windows\explorer.exe src
2014-12-11T11:37:23.3319560-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE WDExpress C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\WDExpress.exe ApplicationLogger - Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop (Administrator)
2014-12-11T13:44:53.9509379-05:00 app::focus ZMACHINE studio64 C:\Users\zeh.fernando\AppData\Local\Android\android-studio-0.8.14\bin\studio64.exe android - [D:\work\QWERTY_APPS2852\dev\android-app] - [app] - ...\app\src\main\java\com\querty\obfuscated\ApplicationConstants.java - Android Studio 1.0
2014-12-11T12:24:14.1160028-05:00 status::idle
2014-12-11T13:49:01.4716875-05:00 status::stop
The project is a Visual Studio 2013 project. It's a single form project, so it should be fairly simple to change, customize and recompile.
This project is licensed under the WTFPL license.