aw-watcher-web-chrome reports only beginning and end of tab use

[atrom]

When a tab is active for longer than a couple minutes, aw-watcher-web-chrome reports a minute-long event at the beginning and a minute-long event at the end, with nothing reported in between. This is aw-watcher-web v. 0.5.3 on Chrome v. 140.0.7339.208, OSX v. 26.0 (25A354). ActivityWatch is v0.13.2.

Please let me know if I can provide better info to replicate or describe the problem. Thanks!

[ErikBjare]

If this happens that probably means the timer ("alarm") which is supposed to check in every 60s has failed to do so.
Restarting the extension might temporarily fix it, but it might mean that Chrome is killing the timer to save resources. (This is really hard to debug)

To understand the issue deeper, I'd need to see console logs from the background page of the extension. In Firefox this is easy to do (Extension -> Debug Extensions -> Inspect on aw-watcher-web extension), but I can't seem to figure out how to do it in Chrome without installing the extension in developer mode.

[pierloik]

I have the same issue when watching youtube videos and it seems to not happen when I have the devtools window open in the background (from "service worker" link in the extension settings). I comment here because this issue's title is a better description of the symptom imo.
Could give insights :

• https://developer.chrome.com/blog/
• https://github.com/mad1ost/persistent-service-worker

[Tokisaki-Galaxy]

same question on edge, the extension on firefox work normally

I have the same issue when watching youtube videos and it seems to not happen when I have the devtools window open in the background (from "service worker" link in the extension settings). I comment here because this issue's title is a better description of the symptom imo.

I repeat, when I start service worker link in the extension settings, anything is ok

[Tokisaki-Galaxy]

I may have found a potential workaround for this issue. After some testing, it seems that the Service Worker is indeed being terminated by Chromium's aggressive power-saving/resource-management policies in Manifest V3.

You can try disabling the termination feature via a command-line flag. This seems to keep the extension active even during long periods of inactivity (like watching YouTube).

Completely close your browser.
Right-click your browser shortcut -> Properties.
In the Target field, add a space at the end and paste the following:
--disable-features=ExtensionServiceWorkerTermination
Launch the browser using this shortcut.

Note for Edge users: You must disable "Startup Boost" and "Continue running background extensions and apps when Microsoft Edge is closed" in edge://settings/system first, or the flag won't take effect because the process never truly exits.