Participant Guide
A passive background tool that measures how you type — not what you type. Every 15 seconds it computes timing patterns from your keystrokes and sends them to our research server. Every 20 minutes a short mood check-in pops up. That's it.
What It Actually Does
The program runs silently in your system tray while you work normally. It measures three things from your keyboard: dwell time (how long you hold each key), flight time (how fast you move between keys), and burst length (how long your continuous typing runs are). These patterns shift with stress, fatigue, and cognitive load — and that's what we're studying.
Every key is converted to a category number before anything is recorded. The logger sees 0 (a letter key was pressed), never which letter. Passwords, messages, and private text are structurally unrecoverable from the data, even if the files were stolen.
Download & Run
Current version: 1.3.1. You can confirm which build you're on anytime via Show Version in the tray menu. The app checks for updates every 5 minutes and updates itself silently — if the tray icon briefly disappears and comes back, that's just an auto-update, not a crash.
Download TypeSenseSetup.exe from the link Lucas sent you. It's a single
self-contained installer — no other files needed.
Because this is a new, unsigned executable, your browser will flag it. See the section below for browser-specific steps.
Double-click TypeSenseSetup.exe and click through the installer. If Windows SmartScreen pops up saying
"Windows protected your PC," click More info → Run anyway This is normal for new unsigned software.
Leave "Launch TypeSense now" checked at the end so it starts right away.
A small box will appear with your unique ID (something like 3a7f192b).
Screenshot it or write it down and send it to Lucas — this is how your data gets linked to you.
Lost the screenshot? Right-click the tray icon and choose Show ID to see it again anytime.
The program lives in your system tray (bottom-right corner of your taskbar). Just type normally. A mood check-in will appear every 20 minutes.
Why It Gets Flagged
Antivirus software and browsers flag any new, unsigned executable that hooks into keyboard input. This is a heuristic — it looks suspicious because keyloggers can be malware, even though this one is a research tool with published source code.
The source code is fully open at github.com/ricewas-mis-taken/TypeSense. You can verify exactly what it does. If your antivirus quarantines it, you may need to add an exception.
After the download starts, a bar appears at the bottom of Edge. Click the three-dot menu (…) next to the file name.
Click Keep. A follow-up dialog will appear warning you about the file.
Hover over Delete — this reveals a secondary option below it.
Click Download anyway. The file will now save normally.
Note: On Chrome, click the download arrow → Keep dangerous file. On Firefox, click Keep file in the warning dialog.
The System Tray Icon
Once running, the program hides itself and lives as a small icon in your system tray — the row of small icons in the bottom-right corner of your taskbar, near the clock. You may need to click the ↑ arrow to expand hidden icons if you don't see it immediately.
Right-click the icon at any time to access these options:
The program does not show in your taskbar or Alt+Tab list — it's fully background. If you want to stop it, right-click the tray icon and choose Quit Logger.
Need a break from check-ins during something like gaming or focused work? Right-click the tray icon and toggle Do Not Disturb or Gaming Mode — either one pauses the mood check-in popup. They're mutually exclusive (turning one on turns the other off), and both automatically reset to off when the app restarts, so you won't accidentally leave one on for days.
One important difference: Gaming Mode also tags that period's data so it can be excluded from analysis later. Your typing data is still collected while Gaming Mode is on — it's just flagged separately rather than mixed in with your other sessions.
The tray icon's dot turns red while either mode is active, and green the rest of the time, so you can tell at a glance which state you're in.
If Do Not Disturb or Gaming Mode is left on for more than 2 hours, a popup will appear asking "You have been in DND for more than 2 hours. Stop?" with a green Stop button and a red Ignore button. Unlike the mood check-in, this popup can be closed normally — closing it counts as Ignore, and it will re-prompt every hour until you turn the mode off.
The Mood Check-In
Every 20 minutes a small window will appear on top of whatever you're doing. It takes about 10 seconds. You'll rate three things on a 1–7 scale and pick what you're mainly doing.
The check-in window cannot be closed, minimized, or dismissed with Escape or Alt+F4 — those are disabled so we don't end up with gaps in the data. Please just answer the three sliders and pick an activity; it takes about 10 seconds. The activity choices are Coding, Gaming, Browsing, Studying, and Writing. You can also trigger a check-in manually from the tray icon at any time.
Check-ins don't fire like clockwork every 20 minutes — if you've been away from the keyboard, one may be skipped so you're not interrupted the moment you step back in.
Uninstalling
Go to Settings → Apps → Installed apps (or "Apps & Features" on older Windows), find TypeSense, and uninstall it like any other program. That single step removes everything: the app itself, the scheduled watchdog task that keeps it running, the autostart entry, and the local data folder. Nothing is left behind, and no manual cleanup is needed.