How to Install Kimai on Windows 10

Kimai is a free and open-source time-tracking application that can be installed on different operating systems including Windows 10. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of installing Kimai on a Windows 10 operating system.

Prerequisites

A Windows 10 computer
XAMPP for Windows installed (download and install it from https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html)

Steps

Download the latest version of Kimai from https://www.kimai.org/download/ and extract it to C:\xampp\htdocs\kimai.
Rename the app/config/kimai.yml.dist file to app/config/kimai.yml.
Open the kimai.yml file and edit the following details:

kimai:
    # [...]
    timesheet:
        default_begin:
            hour: 9
            minute: 0
        tracking_mode: day
        active_entries: true
    # [...]
    timesheet_rates:
        default: hour
        # [...]
    # [...]
    languages: [en, fr]
    # [...]

doctrine:
    dbal:
        driver: pdo_mysql
        host: localhost
        port: null
        dbname: kimai
        user: kimai
        password: kimai
        charset: utf8mb4
    orm:
        auto_generate_proxy_classes: '%kernel.debug%'
        naming_strategy: doctrine.orm.naming_strategy.underscore
        auto_mapping: true

Change dbname to your database name and user and password to your MySQL database credentials. Make sure to set the charset to utf8mb4.

Now we need to create a database for Kimai. Open XAMPP Control Panel, start the Apache and MySQL modules, and then open phpMyAdmin by clicking the Admin button next to MySQL.
In phpMyAdmin, click on the Databases tab, then type kimai in the Database name field and click the Create button.
After creating the database, click on the kimai database name from the left sidebar, click on the SQL tab and run the following SQL code to create the tables:

SET sql_mode = '';

CREATE TABLE kimai_users (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL, 
username VARCHAR(180) NOT NULL, 
password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, 
alias VARCHAR(60) NOT NULL, 
email VARCHAR(180) NOT NULL, 
language VARCHAR(5) NOT NULL, 
timezone VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'UTC', 
active TINYINT(1) NOT NULL, 
roles LONGTEXT NOT NULL COMMENT '(DC2Type:array)', 
create_date DATETIME NOT NULL COMMENT \'(DC2Type:datetime_immutable)\', 
PRIMARY KEY(id)
) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci ENGINE = InnoDB;

After creating the tables, Kimai is now ready to be installed. Open your web browser and type the following URL in the address bar: http://localhost/kimai/install.php.
Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process, then delete the installation folder.
You can now access Kimai by typing the URL http://localhost/kimai in your web browser.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Kimai on your Windows 10 computer. You can now start tracking time for your projects and tasks.