VS26 "Coding Time" Error shown and not recording activity

[odskee]

With the plugin installed on Visual Studio 2026, an error appears at the bottom (instead of the time counter):

WakaTime: Today's coding time

{"level":"error","now":"2025-12-29T10:12:57Z","caller":"cmd/run.go:58","func":"github.com/wakatime/wakatime-cli/cmd.RunE","message":"failed to parse config files: failed to load configuration file: failed to merge config file: While parsing config: key-value delimiter not found: \u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000"}

After uninstalling and then reinstalling, the same issue occurred again. Turning on Debug and checking the log file didn't show any errors though, just a handful of the following lines repeated:

{"level":"debug","now":"2025-12-29T10:18:24Z","caller":"cmd/run.go:118","func":"github.com/wakatime/wakatime-cli/cmd.RunE","message":"command: today","version":"v1.132.1","os/arch":"windows/amd64"}
{"level":"debug","now":"2025-12-29T10:18:30Z","caller":"today/today.go:33","func":"github.com/wakatime/wakatime-cli/cmd/today.Run","message":"successfully fetched today for status bar","version":"v1.132.1","os/arch":"windows/amd64"}

(The FIx)
I went hunting through the various cfg files based on the error and found that wakatime-internal.cfg seemed to be corrupt - it seemed to be a collection of 0 value bytes. I replaced this with the following lines:

[internal]
backoff_at              = 
backoff_retries         = 0

This resulted in WakaTime working again with no errors and a the time counter once again showing.

No idea on the cause, possibly during the installation of VS2026. I'm also not sure if this is removed during the uninstallation of the plugin through VS but if it is then something is causing this to be created incorrectly.

Environment:

• OS: win
• Platform: amd64
• VS 2026 18.1.1

[gandarez]

Somehow your config file was corrupted and the internal section can be removed as it recreates when needed.

[7-zete-7]

I encountered the same problem. The wakatime-internal.cfg file had a lot of 0x00 bytes in the first line. Removing the line with those bytes solved the problem.