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KeyCounter

Build status Build Status

How many keys do you press each day?

KeyCounter is a small GUI application that continuously counts your key press, and automatically exports data into CSV file for your future use.

Requirements

Requirements are packed into requirements folder. If you want to build form source code, you'll need to install the requirements listed in dev-requirements.txt too.

How to build

Currently all releases and CI builds are built with Python 2.7.

Run python build.py. This will produce:

  • The EXE executable file dist/KeyCounter.exe on Windows.
  • The DMG disk image file dist/KeyCounter.dmg on macOS.

How to use

  • On Windows:

    Launch the .exe file directly. You can also set a startup entry for it so you don't need to manually run it each time your system restarts. Please note that some anti-virus software like Windows Defender will report KeyCounter as Trojan, but it's completely safe. Either trust KeyCounter or build the executable from source, it's up to you.

    The count number will be displayed in a transparent window on the right bottom of your primary display. It will automatically adjust itself to stay just above the taskbar.

  • On macOS:

    Drag the .app bundle from the dmg image to anywhere you want, and right click on it, select "Open". If the system prevents it from running, open "System Preferences", go to "Security and privacy", check for KeyCounter in "General" panel, click "Open" if the button is presented.

    Then quit KeyCounter, go to "Privacy" panel in the same page, and add KeyCounter into the list of apps authorized to accessibility functionality. Launch KeyCounter again and you're good to go.

Linux is currently not supported. Any contribution is welcome, though.

Known issues

On Windows, key events in the following processes are not working properly, which seems to be an issue of pyHook:

  • Task manager
  • Remote desktop

On macOS, the following key events are not working properly:

  • Function keys (media keys will work, however)
  • Caps lock key (count only increase once if you press it twice)

Get real time data

KeyCounter will count your key press, save and export data:

  • If you tell it to quit. (Save on quit)
  • If you press a key and it's already another day. (Daily reset)
  • If the system is shutting down or restarting.

However under some circumstances you might want to get real time data. KeyCounter provides a lightweight socket API server for this purpose. You can launch it with the --port option, and KeyCounter will bind and listen on that port. You can communicate with it via multiprocessing.connection.Client in Python.

Some limitations will be applied:

  • port must be an integer in range of (1024, 65535]

Available commands:

  • quit to tell KeyCounter to quit
  • Any other command will trigger KeyCounter to send back current count
  • If KeyCounter does not understand your command (e.g. send via Unix nc program or whatever) the connection will be closed

An example:

# Launch KeyCounter like this:
# - Windows: KeyCounter.exe --port 23334
# - macOS: KeyCounter.app/Contents/MacOS/KeyCounter --port 23334

from multiprocessing.connection import Client

c = Client(('127.0.0.1', 23334))
c.send('')  # Any command will trigger the output
print c.recv()

c.send('quit')  # KeyCounter will quit
c.close()