merge problem

[adawoj34]

hello i noticed that my database got quite erased

after i merge anything when i click all-time it shows only today, not fullrange from 12-12-2021,
also i feel some individual games got erased randomly from database idk how
any ideas?

[aardappel]

As your screenshot shows, something happened on 2025_06_07 where it was not able to read the existing database, so it started a new one.

You likely want to take the version from 2025_06_05, copy it, and then rename to db.PT and make it the active database. Then you can see if you can merge the most recent database into it.

[adawoj34]

I've tried that, theoretically that worked for me always, but now when i click Quick Set under Data Range it doesnt change the range but it changes hours, and I feel like few games that had few hundred hours are missing

[lslatr23]

This app database part is broken. Activity monitoring is superior - there is not another app like this, it is perfect. But the database files get occasionaly deleted. I investigated cca 1-2 years ago, and I think that some windows/application/website names contain strange characters/utf-8/whatever, and when saving those window names in the database, the database gets truncated/broken. But I have almost zero coding skills so I could not debug correctly, and also the database is custom format and custom algorithms which I do not understand. It is a pity because this app is superior.

This is a situation where I would love to be smarter and understand algorithms/code/technical stuff more deeply. Hmmm but I did not try AI on the source code, maybe AI could find the issue. I will try this approach.

[CharonM72]

Sorry to reopen this thread, but I have a similar problem but potentially far worse.

This is sorted by date - but notice the filesizes. They're absolutely all over the place: growing, shrinking, growing, shrinking, by massive amounts often. Importing one imports data from the date it was saved but going back some arbitrary amount of time (related to the filesize).

I've been using ProcrastiTracker since 2021, but even my db backups back then were the same situation. I only noticed the issue now.

As others have said, I can't just merge them all, as that creates many many overlapping duplicate entries. As each backup contains some arbitrary amount of prior data, which is not predictable, there's no way to merge in a way that is clean and results in no overlap.

I do very regularly deal with Unicode characters - my system is in Japanese, and I regularly deal with applications and websites with Japanese and Chinese titlebars. I imagine this may be the issue, causing arbitrary truncation. It's very unfortunate that this happens as this makes the application largely unusable except for looking up one or two specific dates at a time (only by manually loading backup databases).

I realize this may not be an easy fix, but I just wanted to add my two cents here, as I don't know of any comparatively convenient and easy to use (and not incredibly sketchy) tracking software. Maybe someone familiar with some AI something or other (Copilot or Claude or something) can run this issue through and figure something out - I'd do it but I have no subscriptions.

[aardappel]

Big changes in file size are possible, as the "Cull on load" setting (see advanced settings) will merge possibly large amounts of entries to keep the database size manageable.

That said, I would agree that going back down to 11KB after several months of usage seems highly unlikely. This could be a full restart, but you have several such moments. So either you have something on your system that frequently makes the database fail to write, or there is indeed a bug in PT.

My database has been running for 18 years, and has never had such an issue.. and for sure contains plenty of unicode.