Aw window Watcher fail to run on Windows

[TheInspectator]

• I am on the latest ActivityWatch version.
• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe that this is not a duplicate.

• OS name and version: Windows 11 Home, Version: 23H2
• ActivityWatch version: v0.13.1

Describe the bug

Module aw-window-watcher won't run.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior, for example:
1. Go to C:\Users<user name>\AppData\Local\Programs\ActivityWatch\aw-watcher-window
2. Click on aw-watcher-window.exe
4. See error

Expected behavior

I expected it to work.

Documentation

The following constantly repeats:
2024-08-16 09:45:39 [INFO ]: Connection to aw-server established by aw-watcher-window (aw_client.client:447)
2024-08-16 09:45:40 [ERROR]: Exception thrown while trying to get active window (aw_watcher_window.main:124)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "aw_watcher_window\main.py", line 106, in heartbeat_loop
File "aw_watcher_window\lib.py", line 70, in get_current_window
File "aw_watcher_window\lib.py", line 39, in get_current_window_windows
File "PyInstaller\loader\pyimod02_importers.py", line 419, in exec_module
File "aw_watcher_window\windows.py", line 5, in
ImportError: DLL load failed while importing win32api: The specified procedure could not be found.

Additional context

I've since installed python and pywin32 but no change. By the way I found data that it worked a year ago even though I didn't install this till yesterday.

[github-actions]

Hi there!
As you're new to this repo, please make sure you've used an appropriate issue template and searched for duplicates (it helps us focus on actual development!). We'd also like to suggest that you read our contribution guidelines and our code of conduct.
Thanks a bunch for opening your first issue! 🙏

[a-fakhri]

Same issue here

[Herdo]

Got the same issue :(

[heppson]

Same for me on 0.13.2

[redmondChris]

Very similar issue happening for me, also. (Ref. https://forum.activitywatch.net/t/no-results-for-aw-watcher-window/3476.)

Similar to @TheInspectator , I'm seeing the following lines in the log, repeated over and over.

2025-02-13 11:44:16 [ERROR]: Exception thrown while trying to get active window  (aw_watcher_window.main:133)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "aw_watcher_window\main.py", line 115, in heartbeat_loop
  File "aw_watcher_window\lib.py", line 70, in get_current_window
  File "aw_watcher_window\lib.py", line 39, in get_current_window_windows
  File "PyInstaller\loader\pyimod02_importers.py", line 419, in exec_module
  File "aw_watcher_window\windows.py", line 5, in <module>
ImportError: DLL load failed while importing win32api: The specified procedure could not be found.

Like @heppson , I'm running 0.13.2.

[MartenMM]

I've delved a bit deeper. This issue appears in 0.13.0 and onwards, rolling back to 0.12.2 fixes this for the time being. I also have 0.13.2 installed on a different machine and on that machine it seems to work most of the time (I'm having different issues there that I need to get to the bottom of).

Edit: I think what fixed it was doing a clean install. After removing 0.12.2 and installing 0.13.2 the issue has yet to re-appear. I'll update this in case the issue returns. The issues also started directly after updating my updating to (without de-installing first) 0.13.2.

[redmondChris]

@MartenMM - I think I'd previously reinstalled 0.13.2 over itself when trying to work around this. Based on your comment, I just tried a clean install of 0.13.2, and it looks as if aw-watcher-window is functioning again. Thanks for the suggestion!