ActivityWatch Android 0.14.2 Released

ActivityWatch Android 0.14.2 is out. Sync used to be a black box: you waited, hoped events showed up on desktop, and guessed when the next pass would run. This release makes that visible, ships 13 bug fixes, and adds a dedicated research build flavor.

What’s new

Sync transparency

Two features make sync inspectable:

Next scheduled sync time now appears in Sync Settings (aw-android#290). You can see when the next automatic sync will run.
Sync pass reporting (aw-android#285). The app records and shows exactly what each sync pass did, which is the difference between “sync is broken” and “this pass skipped a broken peer.”

Research build flavor (aw-android#281)

A dedicated research build with its own applicationId and port. Researchers can run the research edition alongside the regular app without conflicts. That is the Lund University study setup: two installs, two ports, no collisions.

Bug fixes (13)

The full list is in the release notes. A few that bit people:

Startup hardening (aw-android#262): a slow datastore no longer hangs the app at start
Accessibility tree traversal bounds (aw-android#269): prevents StackOverflowError on devices with deep accessibility trees
Orientation change without WebView reload (aw-android#271): rotating the phone no longer nukes the current view
Hostname migration (aw-android#273): migrates buckets from the old unsanitized hostname to the sanitized form, fixing sync identity after the hostname sanitizer change in 0.14.1
System bars match WebUI theme (aw-android#276): the status and navigation bars follow the app’s dark/light theme instead of staying light
Onboarding relaunch (aw-android#298): after onboarding finishes, the main activity restarts correctly

aw-server-rust updates

The embedded sync engine got the same treatment:

Opt-in daemon pull: aw-sync daemon now requires explicit config to pull from peers (safe default)
SyncReport: each sync pass returns a structured report so the app can display what happened
Peer robustness: broken peers are skipped instead of aborting the whole pass; peer databases are opened read-only
Dedup on resume: boundary events are deduped to prevent re-imports after a sync restart

Get it

Download from GitHub or update from the Play Store. The research edition is available as a separate APK on the release page.

F-Droid users: the build typically appears 1–2 days after the GitHub release as F-Droid’s build infrastructure picks up the new tag.

Thanks to @0xbrayo, @erikbjare, @Q-Ze, and @TimeToBuildBob for contributing to this release.