Privacy and tracked data

Hackatime receives activity events, called heartbeats, from your WakaTime-compatible editor plugin. The plugin sends metadata about the active coding session, not the contents of the file.

Metadata a heartbeat can contain

Depending on the editor and plugin, a heartbeat can include:

• the file path or other entity name
• project, branch, language and dependencies
• editor, operating system, machine and plugin information
• activity category, timestamp and line-count metadata
• AI coding metadata supported by newer WakaTime clients
• request metadata such as IP address and user agent

Hackatime does not receive screenshots, a stream of your keystrokes, password values or the contents of the file you are editing through ordinary heartbeats.

Hide sensitive paths before sending

Warning for Hack Club programme submissions: Hiding file names or other activity metadata can prevent reviewers from verifying your work and may cause your submission to be rejected. Keep file names visible for activity you plan to submit. These options are supported by WakaTime-compatible plugins, but that does not mean the resulting activity is eligible for a Hack Club programme.

Privacy options belong under [settings] in ~/.wakatime.cfg. They are applied by the plugin before a heartbeat reaches Hackatime.

Send paths relative to the detected project folder:

[settings]
hide_project_folder = true

Obfuscate every file name while retaining its extension:

[settings]
hide_file_names = true

You can also set hide_file_names to a list of path patterns, or use hide_project_names, hide_branch_names and hide_dependencies for the corresponding metadata.

Exclude paths entirely

exclude entries are POSIX regular expressions. Matching activity is not sent:

[settings]
exclude =
    /node_modules/
    /vendor/
    \\.env$
    /private/

Use forward slashes in patterns, including on Windows. Test broad expressions carefully: excluded time cannot appear in Hackatime because the plugin never sends it.

For the complete client-side option reference, see the WakaTime CLI configuration documentation.