Human Activities

monitor size of directories

Human Activities is an application that displays a pie chart icon in the Windows Taskbar, macOS Menu Bar or Linux System Tray. The icon shows ratio between the number of files in configured directories. When clicked, a menu with a list of the directories and the exact number of files appears.

The application can be configured to compare the size of the data in the directories instead of the number of files in them. It can also be configured to only count files that are newer than specified number of days.

Human Activities is an offline application. It doesn't send any data over the internet.

The Human Activities project

This application is part of the Human Activities project which focuses on limiting the exploitation of individuals as part of contemporary production relationships. Read more about the project on its website.

The Human Activities project was partially financed by The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Prague.

Installation

Windows 7 and 8

1. Download and open Human_Activities-win7.exe. The app will start immediately. No installation process is required.
2. To launch the application automatically each time you start the computer, copy Human_Activities-win7.exe into the Startup folder of the Start Menu.
3. To make sure that the application icon is always visible:
   1. Click the arrow icon in the Taskbar and select Customize.
   2. In the window that opens up, choose Show icon and notifications next to the item Human Activities.

Security

Before opening Human_Activities-win7.exe, you can check the sha256 checksum of this file:

6d5cfa9766ceec45d195ebbba1b06a85f176e28f88e1b660c92ad63711b023eb  Human_Activities-win7.exe

Windows 10

1. Download and open Human_Activities-win10.exe. The app will start immediately. No installation process is required.
2. To launch the application automatically each time you start the computer:
   1. Press WIN+R. In the window that pops up, write the command shell:startup and click OK.
   2. Then move Human_Activities-win10.exe to the window that opens up.
3. To make sure that the application icon is always visible:
   1. Click on the arrow icon (Show Hidden Icons) in the Taskbar and select Taskbar Settings.
   2. In the window that opens up, click on Select which icons appear on the Taskbar and then switch item Human Acitivities on.

Security

Before opening Human_Activities-win10.exe, you can check the sha256 checksum of this file:

bc5343c7346c177d33e998bd144a3b5d389508e5b051bc3b5f6935866e8d3fd3  Human_Activities-win10.exe

macOS

Requires macOS Mojave or newer. Tested on macOS Mojave.

1. Download Human_Activities-1.0.0.zip and open it.
2. Move the file Human Activities.app to Applications.
3. Human Activities can now be started from Launcher.
4. To launch the application automatically each time you start the computer:
   1. Open System Preferences > Users & Groups.
   2. Click on the tab Login Items,
   3. Click on the little plus sign icon and select the app Human Activities.

Security

Before opening Human_Activities-1.0.0.zip, you can check the sha256 checksum of this file:

8b4657d276b0e397d9fca6a77769ef4dd90bca894ea44a1a5008bd25947c94ce  Human_Activities-1.0.0.zip

Ubuntu

Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 19.10.

1. Download and open human-activities_1.0.0-1_all.deb.
2. Click the button Install in the window that opens up.
3. Human Acitivies can now be started from the main Applications menu. It will also start automatically each time you start the computer.

Security

Before installing the package, you can verify its GPG signature:

$ gpg --recv-key 11E74F7E
$ dpkg-sig --verify human-activities_1.0.0-1_all.deb
Processing human-activities_1.0.0-1_all.deb...
GOODSIG _gpgbuilder E7582303262850695EF0B8A797C3CB6A11E74F7E 1580146502

Arch Linux

Build the package from provided PKGBUILD or download human-activities-1.0.0-1-any.pkg.tar.xz and install it with pacman.

Usage

Setup

When Human Activities is started for the first time, it will show a setup window (this might take a few seconds).

Here you can choose which directories to monitor. You can only choose existing directories. The app doesn't create any new directories itself. When you remove a directory, it will be removed only from the app, your files will stay on the disk. Human Activities never creates, modifies or deletes any files.

Icon and menu

When the setup is finished, Human Activities shows a pie chart icon with ratio between the number of files in the directories configured in the setup. The colors are assigned to the directories automatically.

When you click the icon you can see a menu with the exact number of files in the directories and the exact percentages.

You can also see a note that only files modified in the past 30 days are counted to the size of a directory. This behavior can be changed in the Advanced configuration.

From the menu, you can also reach the Setup (which you saw when you first started the app) and the Advanced configuration. On Windows, these items are accessible in separate menu that opens when you right-click the icon.

How the pie chart is calculated

Let's say we chose two directories during the setup:

• /Users/jakub/Paid work which contains 15 files
• /Users/jakub/Unpaid work which contains 30 files

Then Human Activities will first calculate the sum of the number of files in both directories, which is 45. This will be the 100%. Therefore Paid work takes 33.3% and Unpaid work takes 66.6% of the total number of files. This percentage will then be shown as a pie chart, which is ⅓ one color and ⅔ another color.

Advanced configuration

The advanced configuration allows you to:

• Count the size of the data in the directories instead of the number of files in them.
• Change how new (in terms of modification time) the files have to be to be counted.
• Give custom names to the configured directories.

Ignoring files

Human Activities never counts hidden files and directories.

Additionaly, the application ignores some common system files and directories such as Thumbs.db on Windows. You can find the exact list of ignore patterns in human-activities.fdignore. (On Linux, this file is also available at /etc/xdg/human-activities/human-activities.fdignore after the installation of the app.)

To configure which files get ignored, copy human-activities.fdignore to:

• C:\\Users\NAME\AppData\roaming\human-activities\human-activities.fdignore on Windows
• /Users/NAME/Preferences/cz.jakubvalenta.human-activities/human-activities.fdignore on macOS
• ~/.config/human-activities/human-activities.fdignore on Linux

Then edit the file to your liking. It uses the .gitignore syntax.

Uninstallation

Windows 7 and 8

Delete Human_Activities-win7.exe from the Startup folder of the Start Menu.

Windows 10

1. Press WIN+R. In the window that pops up, write the command shell:startup and click OK.
2. Then delete Human_Activities-win10.exe from the window that opens up.

macOS

Delete Human Activities.app from the Applications folder.

Ubuntu

1. Open Ubuntu Software and click on the tab Installed.
2. Scroll to Human Activities and click the button Remove.

Arch Linux

Uninstall the package human-activities using pacman.

Support and help

Please use GitHub Issues.

Development

Building and running from source

Windows

$ pip install Pillow pathspec sqlalchemy wxpython
$ python -m human_activities --verbose

Mac

$ pip3 install Pillow pathspec sqlalchemy PyQt5
$ python3 -m human_activities --verbose

Arch Linux

# pacman -S pipenv python-wxpython
$ make setup
$ make run-debug

Creating distribution packages

Windows 7 and 8

$ pip install Pillow pathspec sqlalchemy wxpython
$ pip install pyinstaller
$ win7/pyinstaller.cmd

Windows 10

$ pip install Pillow pathspec sqlalchemy wxpython
$ pip install pyinstaller
$ win10/pyinstaller.cmd

Mac

$ pip3 install Pillow pathspec sqlalchemy PyQt5==5.15.2
$ pip3 install pyinstaller
$ make dist-mac

Debian

Install Docker and start it. Then run:

$ make dist-debian-build dist-debian

Additionally, you can sign the created package with GPG:

$ make dist-debian-sign key_id='<gpg key fingerprint>'

Arch Linux

$ make dist-arch-linux

Notice that the package is not built from the currently checked out revision, but from a git tag specified as v + Makefile variable _version.

Translation

Edit the lang/*.po files and then run:

$ make clean-lang gen-lang

Testing and linting

$ make test
$ make lint

Contributing

Feel free to remix this project under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. See COPYING and NOTICE.