Filters

TimeSnapper allows you to filter out unwanted snapshots. You might filter screen shots to:

• filter out sensitive information being recorded and stored such as banking information, instant messaging conversations etc.
• filter out programs that you are not interested in, e.g. to save on disk space

The reverse is also possible, i.e. to only include some programs you are interested in. You can filter by either the program name (such as winword.exe) or by the applications caption (the title bar). There exist two types of filters:

• Exclusion filter
  • tells TimeSnapper to take screen shots of everything except of dialogs the match the filter
• Inclusion filter
  • tells TimeSnapper not to take screen shots of anything unless it's specified in the filter

You can have multiple sets of filters, but only one set can be active at a time, as seen above.

Here you define the criteria for each filter:

Each criterion comes on a separate line (separated with [Enter]). Filters can included wildcards, for a broader match: *New York Times*

The filters work best when you have TimeSnapper configured to only capture the active application (as opposed to the whole screen(s)), i.e. with the option: "Screens to capture: Active Application". If you're taking full screen captures and use the filters, any windows in the back will be included even though they are excluded in the filters dialog. This is because the filters are only used against the active window.

Exclude from Capture

The quickest and easiest way to add criteria to a filter is through the Day Browser:

Right click the image that you don't want included in the automatic snapshots and select "Exclude from Capture...". That opens a dialog that lets you quickly exclude screen shots of that particular program or with the same window title (can be altered). You can even have TimeSnapper delete all old snapshots according to this filter -- so be careful!

Tips

• You can activate the No Screenshots filter and TimeSnapper will not take any screenshots but only track statistics. That means you can use every feature in TimeSnapper, apart from the screen shots. That might sound odd but can be useful to those who want to keep track of their time with e.g. the flag dialog and the Automatic Note Taking Reminder.