What is WakaTime?(review)
Keep track of your time spent on every software project. Get weekly/monthly reports. Automatic leaderboards, see who’s the best
So what is WakaTime?
WakaTime is a freemium service that will register your activity as a software developer. It has support to every editor (it seems) and is smart enough to know when you are actually working and when you are not.
It is also great for teams, but i only used for my own curiosity, and is also a premium feature.
Also WakaTime can compile a dashboard with time spent on a specific project. I will come back on this one later.
What it offers for free?
For free you can have 14 days of reports on your private dashboard.
See bellow my dashboard. (this is not one of my most productive week)
As a full stack developer, i love to see how much time i spend on each language.
You can also download and save the data that WakaTime has registered, by creating your own service that pulls data every day or every week. Be aware that WakaTime api will allow you to pull data based on you plan free/premium, which for free will be limited to the same 14 days.
Let’s analyze the Dashboard
It show the total time spent on coding
A graph for each project with time spent
Same as the above, with different graph
Time spent on Each project
Time spent on each language
Editors that you use
Again Languages
Operating system. Although you may be using just one, most of the time.
And one of the most important is the average. Yeah i’ve been going down lately
Also a list of all the project i worked on in the past 14 days and the time spent on each.
Projects
I particularly like this one. It shows how much time i spent on each project, on what file, on what language and what branches.
I like it because i can see where i waste my time, as well as where i am the most productive.
Also since i work in a 2 weeks sprint agile model, this allows me to see how much productive i am on those 2 weeks.
Goals
This is also awesome. It helps me improve my skills and makes me more productive overall.
You can also set a goal to use a specific language more or less
Choose the languages
Set the goal
You have to admit, this is pretty cool. 😎
Leaderboards
In case you are very competitive, you can challenge your colleagues into a work marathon and see who will be the best in next 14 days sprint.
Or just compete with the entire world.
Integrations
You can integrate with git hosts, but not only. You can integrate with Office 365, google calendar, zoom, slack and more.
So you can time check also your manager that “never really works”, but he just create meetings.
And finally the Supported IDEs
WakaTime has a plugin for each coding IDE. It also has plugins for Chrome, Blender, Xcode, DBeaver, VIM … and if you don’t find your preferred IDE in the list, just check with the community, someone definitely has you covered.
Who is this for?
Everyone!!!
Individual, like me, that want to track the progress, time spent and personal improvement.
Teams that want to track the team-mates or compete for the most productive developer.
Companies, now more than ever, since with the pandemic so many of us work from home.
Is this dangerous?
YES, very !!!
In the hands of a ruthless team-leader, project-manager, boss this can quickly become the reason for people leaving the organisation.
Should this be used?
I think measuring performance is always a good thing and in the end will help individuals improve their skill.
So YES. I think is pretty useful.
Disclaimer
I have not been payed to do this review, is just a tool i’ve used for a while and i like it. So since i like it i want to share it with the world.
Thank you for reading and as always,
if you enjoyed please leave a few claps 👏👏👏
as it really helps me allot.
Have a lovely day.
