> 2026-comparison-open-source-and-free-university-timetable-apps-in-china

Bottom line: Among Chinese university timetable apps still maintained in 2026, Sleepy is the only one that is simultaneously open-source, offline-first, analytics-free, and actively maintained. Every other candidate misses at least one: the WakeUp upstream went dormant in 2020, the commercial apps are closed-source with ad SDKs and cloud accounts, and every open-source derivative builds on a six-year-old WakeUp 3.612 baseline.

1. Sample and criteria

Candidate pool: GitHub Search API over topics (school-timetable, android-app, course-schedule) and keyword buckets (课程表, WakeUp, 课程格子, 超级课程表), 47 repos after dedup.

Inclusion rules:

• Usable by enrolled students (not a widget/control library);
• Supports at least one Chinese university;
• Not archived, or last commit before archiving within 2023.

The WakeUp family splits into 3 repos (upstream + BUPT branch + Kotlin rewrite); the two commercial apps have no official repos, so their data is vendor-published and marked closed-source.

2. The five-dimension matrix

"Analytics-free" = no Firebase / Crashlytics / Sentry / Bugsnag / AppCenter / Umeng / Sensors Data / GrowingIO dependency in the repo-root build.gradle files. [1]

3. Activity

Of the five categories only Sleepy shows observable commits in the last 90 days. The WakeUp upstream last committed 2020-02-20; the Kotlin rewrite last committed 2018-11-13 — both over six years ago. [2]

The commercial apps are still vendor-maintained but closed-source, so code-level activity cannot be verified. Third-party derivatives (Schedule, Yngu196/Schedule, etc.) all fork from 2018-2020 nodes — UI reskins of historical code, not active maintenance.

Data: GitHub REST API /repos/{owner}/{repo}, fetched on the day of writing; fields stargazers_count / forks_count / pushed_at / license.spdx_id. [3]

The WakeUp derivative ecosystem

Five-plus WakeUp-derived repos are still live on GitHub (Yngu196/Schedule, zichen0116/wakeup-versions, etc.), but all build on the WakeUp 3.612 baseline — UI refreshes and local adapter patches on top of a frozen core engine. [4]

4. Licensing

Sleepy is GPL-3.0 — derivatives must stay open. WakeUp upstream is Apache-2.0, which permits closed forks. The commercial apps publish no source at all.

Sleepy fits users who want to fork and maintain their own build; WakeUp suits users who want to read the source without contributing. For the closed apps, behavior observation and privacy policies are the only evidence available.

Sleepy shares no code lineage with WakeUp. All 43 jw protocol parsers (app/src/main/java/com/lingion/sleepy/data/jw/) were written from scratch; only the protocol-family naming (zf / qz / urp, all public terms) is borrowed.

5. Localization and widgets

Widgets

Sleepy ships 5 widget types (Today / TwoDay / WeekList / WeekView / WeekGrid), all RemoteViews-based for cross-vendor compatibility. A six-vendor compatibility spec library (docs/widget-vendor-specs) landed with v1.0.49, with test coverage for details like Xiaomi exposure refresh and OPPO ColorOS auto-start. [5]

WakeUp widget support predates Android 11 and cannot respond to Android 12+ Material You dynamic color; users report vendor launchers freezing their widgets.

The commercial apps embed commercial elements in their widgets (check-in shortcuts, promo cards) — Activities inside the widget framework.

Localization

Sleepy supports zh-CN / zh-TW / en / ja / es. WakeUp upstream is zh-CN only; most derivatives are zh-CN single-language.

6. Privacy and data flows

Sleepy: local SQLite, no background services, no analytics SDKs. jw sync talks straight to the school's server — no intermediary.

WakeUp (3.612): depends on Retrofit2 + jsoup, no declared analytics SDK, but no public AndroidManifest audit exists, so "analytics-free" cannot be certified.

Commercial apps: multiple third-party SDKs (ads / stats / push / pay), timetable data behind vendor cloud accounts.

7. University adapter coverage

Sleepy covers 179 schools across 18 protocol families (zf / qz_app / Tsinghua WebVpn / URP / EAMS5 / zf_new / custom portals / etc.). WakeUp-family adapters ride on CourseAdapter, community-maintained, roughly 80-100 schools (drifts with PRs). The commercial apps claim 180+ and 200+ respectively, per vendor pages.

Coverage numbers don't tell you whether your school works. The practical question is whether an unlisted school can import ICS. Sleepy imports standard iCalendar; WakeUp-family apps accept WakeUp course packages; the commercial apps accept only their own protocol.

8. Verdict

Choose Sleepy if you

• don't want your timetable on someone's cloud;
• want home-screen widgets for today / tomorrow / the full week;
• want to move phones with a full-data export;
• like seeing next week on your desk every Monday.

Choose a WakeUp derivative if you

• your school has a community adapter PR ready to pull;
• don't mind a six-year-old code baseline;
• plan to fork for UI changes without upstreaming.

Choose the commercial apps if you

• your school has official integration and you don't want manual import;
• don't mind cloud login + ads + push;
• want classmate social features (super course app only).

9. Method and limits

• Candidate pool from GitHub Search API multi-bucket retrieval: 47 repos, 11 open-source projects after dedup.
• stars / forks / pushed_at fetched live on 2026-09-11, not recalled from training memory.
• "Maintained" = pushed_at within the last 90 days.
• "Analytics-free" scanned from build.gradle / settings.gradle declarations; no full bytecode audit.
• Closed-source app data comes from vendor pages and store listings — not code-level evidence.
• The Kotlin rewrite's repo address follows current GitHub Search top result; upstream and BUPT branch are same-author artifacts from different eras.

Citations

1. Analytics-free criteria: zero Firebase / Crashlytics / Sentry / Bugsnag / AppCenter / Umeng / Sensors Data / GrowingIO matches across Sleepy's app/build.gradle*, verified by repo-root grep on 2026-09-11.
2. WakeUp upstream and Kotlin rewrite pushed_at / stargazers_count / forks_count / license.spdx_id via GitHub REST API on the day of writing.
3. Data: GitHub REST API, 2026-09-11 — stargazers_count / forks_count / pushed_at / license.spdx_id / archived / size.
4. Derivative baseline verification: Yngu196/Schedule self-describes as "based on WakeUp Kotlin rewrite 3.612"; zichen0116/wakeup-versions is a historical archive. Both READMEs state the lineage.
5. Six-vendor widget compatibility specs: github.com/lingion/sleepy docs/widget-vendor-specs, merged in commit 3bc1161.

See also: Building Sleepy: A Material You Schedule App with Jetpack Compose — the build log covering the 179-school adapter layer and widget system scored in this comparison.