MayGo
[Feature request] Problem with idle status when watching media
Is it possible to add an option like "Don't add idle item when actively playing media"? Or maybe still keep tracking apps even when setting the status to idle?
My use-case is the following: When playing Netflix media over the Netflix app the status switches to idle (after the configured time) and stops tracking Netflix as the active app.
My first idea was to add an app exclude-list for the idle settings. But this would also mean that when I get up from the PC and have that app in focus the idle status would never start.
That would be tricky - detecting if specific tab is playing audio (not aware that we can check video natively). Could do with known list + checking audio. Eg: Netflix, Youtube. If those are playing in active window/tab then don't idle. Perhaps we can check only if active window/tab is playing audio. But some websites have background audio, so there would be some false positives. If I would implement this, then need to test with different options.
If you want to test something I'm down to help.
I think an "easy" option would be to add a checkbox to the idle settings Keep tracking app while idle.
Then add a Don't filter out idle apps filter to the timeline. Or something along those lines. The default should be to filter out apps while the status is Idle, so the view remains the same as now.
This way there would be an option to keep tracking idled apps, if one so chooses but the timeline would remain the same (without checking the filter).
If I then want to look up my Netflix times I know that it is an app with a high idle time and just check the filter.
I noticed it too. I'm watching Youtube in the Firefox browser. I was watching hour long videos.
In Tockler, I expected to see a solid block of Firefox in the Timeline but it contains a lot of idle gaps.
In my testing, if I watch a Youtube video in my Firefox browser, Tockler stops tracking it after 1 or 2 minutes. This happens in both windowed or full screen videos.
Could there be a toggle setting to track videos ("Keep tracking when videos are playing")? There could be false positives (for example, some websites playing video ads) but at least it is the user's decision to accept this possibility. This setting could be off by default.
Edit: I also observed it being idle during conference calls. I had a 1 hour long video conference on Microsoft Teams where I was just listening to someone making a talk. Only 9 minutes out of 1 hour was captured by Tockler. The rest was idle time.
There is a module-addon for a similar program called ActivityWatch that seems to be able to track when media is playing on the computer. I don't know how it's implemented as I'm just a layman, but thought it may be helpful or relevant to this issue:
https://github.com/2e3s/aw-watcher-media-player
