Timekpr-nExT

Playtime weekly limit without lockout (Steam Deck)

Asked by Elmar

Hi,
first of all I want to thank you for your hard work and tell you that I got timekpr working on my Steam Deck although I have hardly any experience with linux except from tinkering around with my deck.

The steam deck has some limitations that are important to know. First of all there is only one user called „deck“. You can create different users in desktop mode but in gaming mode it will always be the user „deck“. This is important for the limitations you set up in timekpr because you risk locking yourself out without being able to log in with another (unrestricted) user.

The only lockout type I found being usable fort he steam deck is „suspend computer“. „Terminate session“ will leave you with a black screen in gaming mode. „Lock screen“ only worked in desktop mode for me.

As the Steam Deck is a gaming machine for the most part the limitations I want to set up are related to PlayTime only. In my case I want the kids being able to play 3 hours per week with a maximum of 1 hour per day. If playtime is over games should be terminated but the steam deck itself should not be locked up (leaving me the option to go back to desktop mode and add more time or whatever).

Generally „override mode“ is the way to go here. I can set up everything as intended. Daily limit of 1 hour, weekly limit 3 hours (even unlimited time for parents playing in the evening can be set up). Only the time when filtered applications are being used is accounted for – everything perfect! The only downside is: When time is running out the whole system is being shut down (applications are not being terminatedin this mode). As you can’t login as a different user you may lock yourself out completely…

So my question is: Would it be possible to add a new lockout type that doesn’t suspend/shut down the system but just kills filtered applications? Another solution would be to implement a weekly/monthly limit option for PlayTime as well… this would work when not using override mode..

Thank you very much!

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
Timekpr-nExT Edit question
Assignee:
Eduards Bezverhijs Edit question
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Revision history for this message
Elmar (frizzle0815) said : 		#1

I have found another problem with weekly limits as I was playing around with it today.

Is it possible that the weekly limits are reset together with the monthly limits?

My kids have been playing the whole week within their weekly limit. I was expecting that the usage will be set back to zero after sunday.
However the month ended on wednesday and the values TIME_SPENT_WEEK and TIME_SPENT_MONTH are now identical... missing the times my kids played from monday to wednesday this week.

Revision history for this message
Eduards Bezverhijs (mjasnik) said : 		#2

Hi,

I'm glad it works on Steam Deck and people can use timekpr that way, however, I do NOT own Steam Deck nor plan to, so there will be no testing or experimenting on steam deck that I can do.

I understand that users would like to see sophisticated seamless timekpr interaction with steam deck, but currently I don't see this happening for various reasons and one of them is - I don't have SD.
However, from what you wrote originally, it looks like timekpr works as intended.

So about functionality.
--------------------------------------
In override mode you spend your regular time allowance using PlayTime, when the allowance is over, it ends your sessions or whatever you configure.
In case of Steam Deck, I don't know what exactly happens, but on desktop linux it just terminates / locks / etc. your sessions.
I would imagine that lock might not work, however terminate / suspend should work which you already tested.

I don't know but I would imagine that SD does not really run desktop underneath the steam big picture mode, so in case sessions are terminated, you only see black screen.

>> In my case I want the kids being able to play play 3 hours per week with a maximum of 1 hour per day
I this case you do not need override mode, just choose 3 days, enter PT limit of 1 hour and your'e set.

The thing with PlayTime is that in order for it to work, you need to set up activities, so you need to enter process mask.
Timekpr filters processes using that mask and only kills processes that match the mask when using PT in normal mode, not in override mode which I explained above.
So use normal mode and set up correct process masks for games to be terminated.

About weekly / montly time reset.
--------------------------------------
I'll look into it, maybe there is a bug, monthly and weekly time allowances are rarely used features, so they get less testing overall.

Revision history for this message
Elmar (frizzle0815) said (last edit ): 		#3

Thank you very much for your answer.

>>>> In my case I want the kids being able to play play 3 hours per week with a maximum of 1 hour per day
>>I this case you do not need override mode, just choose 3 days, enter PT limit of 1 hour and your'e set.

Yes, that would be possible. But from my understanding I would have to choose 3 specific days that can be used for playing. Or did I misunderstand something? I want the children to be able to choose for themselves which days they use for playing. And when they play just 30 minutes on one day they can use the remaining 30 minutes on another day. That is exactly what I get when using override mode :)

Don't get me wrong. What I asked for regarding implementing a new lockout type is a minor inconvenience for me. The lockout type "suspend" works on the SD just like pushing the power button - which is perfect in general and there may be many people who are perfectly fine with that!

It all depends on how you want to handle restrictions - and that seems to be very personal.
Another example would be: Our 3 hours per week restriction is not just for SD but for screen media in general (not music, audio books etc.). So when the kids decide to watch tv instead these times need to deducded from their weekly SD limit.
In general I could use "allowance adjustment" in Timekpr for this. However.. as far as I can tell from my testing this just changes the time limit for the current day. Which most likely is absolutely what you intended :) But in my use case I would need to adjust the weekly limit for these changes as well (and them being reset automatically when a new week starts).

Again.. even that is a minor inconvenience. I set up timekpr-next-remote to change limits using my mobile phone. It should be possible to implement a feature there to adjust weekly limits as well.

So in conclusion:
>>However, from what you wrote originally, it looks like timekpr works as intended.
 Yes it does and I'm thankful for that :) Thank you very much!

Revision history for this message
Eduards Bezverhijs (mjasnik) said (last edit ): 		#4

>> Is it possible that the weekly limits are reset together with the monthly limits?

Yeah, I have found a long standing bug - if month changed, monthly and weekly limits got reset even the week did not change , I'll fix this soon and inform you when it will be in beta.

So it seems that very few people use weekly / monthly limits after all :)

Revision history for this message
Eduards Bezverhijs (mjasnik) said (last edit ): 		#5

A new version containing a fix for incorrect weekly time allowance reset is released in beta.

For ArchLinux / Manjaro / etc. that would be timekpr-next-git from AUR ( https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/timekpr-next-git ).

Most likely I will release this fix to stable in a few weeks time.

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