I’m trying to build a macOS utility that will allow me to programmatically change the order of full screen apps on my machine.
For example, let’s say the full screen apps on my machine are currently ordered as follows from left to right:
Chrome
iTerm
Xcode
I want to be able to call a method in AppKit to say something like “Move Xcode from full screen index 2 to index 0”. However, I can't identify an AppKit API that will help me do this.
NSScreen only gives the physical displays, not the full screen apps / spaces
NSApplication only gives the list of my app's windows
CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo looked promising, but it doesn't have information about the order of full screen apps. It also doesn't allow me to get a NSWindow object to have any hope of changing the order
Is what I'm trying to do even possible with AppKit?
Thank you!
Spaces (desktops and fullscreen apps are both just spaces) are a feature of the system Window Manager and only manageable by the user through the app Mission Control.
Of course, the Window Manager needs to expose an API for management, otherwise how would Mission Control interact with it? But that API is not public.
Reverse engineered headers for those private APIs can be found online, e.g.
https://github.com/NUIKit/CGSInternal
With those headers in place, you can write code like this:
#import "CGSInternal/CGSSpace.h"
CGSSpaceID activeSpace =
CGSGetActiveSpace(_CGSDefaultConnection());
NSLog(#"activeSpace: %zu", activeSpace);
CFArrayRef spaceArray =
CGSCopySpaces(_CGSDefaultConnection(), kCGSAllSpacesMask);
NSLog(#"allSpaces: %#", (__bridge id)spaceArray);
But the usual warnings apply here:
You cannot commit code using private APIs to Apple's App Store. There is no official documentation, all that is known about that API has been reversed engineered and may not always be correct. As the API is not public, Apple can change it at any time without any previous warning and thus your working code could break with every system update.
Related
I'm doing the bare minimum here. Creating a cocoa app project, adding a MKMapView to the View Controller, and linking the MapKit framework. When I run the app, the control shows but is not rendering any tiles no matter the zoom level. Everything else works. I can see user location, set coords/regions, read them back, etc... It's just not rendering the tiles. It does show the grid that is loaded before the tiles are cached. Am I overlooking something? This is all that you need to do on iOS.
Please have a look at the debugger window. Is there something like
"Your Application has attempted to access the Map Kit API. You cannot access this API without an entitlement. You may receive an entitlement from the Mac Developer Program for use by you only with your Mac App Store Apps. For more information about Apple's Mac Developer Program, please visit developer.apple.com."
Then you have to add your developer account to your project.
I am developing a windows phone app that uses users current location, I am making the app in 7 OS. My question is, Can I track the location in background, that is when the screen is locked?
I know this is a possibility in wp8 as it provides us with GeoLocator class, but can I achieve this in wp7? I am basically making a runtracker app hence I would like my app to track the location even when its in background, is it really feasible?
Your help is always appreciated!!
It is possible to keep the app running under lock screen, as it does, for example, Endomondo app.
Using Idle Detection, you can keep the app on, although screen is locked, and you can keep on tracking the location. Actually, it is not running in background, but in the foreground. Just the screen is locked. So, be careful not to drain user's battery.
You have to set the PhoneApplicationService.ApplicationIdleDetectionMode property to Disabled, for example in InitializePhoneApplication() method in App.xaml.cs:
PhoneApplicationService.Current.ApplicationIdleDetectionMode = IdleDetectionMode.Disabled;
Note that there are special certification requirements for this type of apps. Refer to section 6.3 (Apps running under a locked screen) of the following page:
Additional requirements for specific app types for Windows Phone
I got the same problem in one on my apps..
I don't think it' s feasible for wp7..
Bt if you want to do it with wp8 you can refer following link.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj681691%28v=vs.105%29.aspx
And to know about background supported and unsupported API's http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202942%28v=vs.105%29.aspx/css
GeoCoordinateWatcher Class exists in WP7, but here is the documentation from MSDN -
This API, used for obtaining the geographic coordinates of the device,
is supported for use in background agents, but it uses a cached
location value instead of real-time data. The cached location value is
updated by the device every 15 minutes.
More Info : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202962%28v=vs.105%29.aspx/css
I am developing a simple application in Cocoa, and I want to detect whether any application is running in full screen mode. Is this possible?
Through runningApplications API, I can get various informations but there is no specific property related to full screen mode. Does any one know how to detect it? Is there any carbon event or API for this?
I ran into this in the spring and spent forever trying to get it to work. I ended up packaging my code up into a little GitHub project, but I completely forgot to share it here.
https://github.com/shinypb/FullScreenDetector
Hope this is useful for someone.
Anyways after trying out so many options and digging into the NSWorkspace i have found way through which we can achieve this their is notification
"NSWorkspaceActiveSpaceDidChangeNotification"
Apple doc says "Posted when a Spaces change has occurred." so by using we can register for it. along with this we need to use the NSWindow's property "isOnActiveSpace" , so by this we can detect when application enters full screen mode and exits from it.
You want to key-value observe -[NSApplication currentSystemPresentationOptions]. When the active app is in full-screen mode, that property will include NSApplicationPresentationFullScreen.
Apps in OS X that can open files to launch their respective applications often let the user choose the app that'll open the file. An example is the Finder.
I am still unclear about what's the best solution to implement this. The challenges are performance and showing the app's icon.
First, to get the list of apps, I found only LSCopyApplicationURLsForURL().
The major difficulty for me now is to get the app icons. All I have is the URLs (paths) to the apps. The only way I know of to get the icons would be to create a CFBundle object and then read the app's plist to get the icon data. But that appears to invole lots of disk access, and I could imagine it'll be quite inefficient if the app is located on a remote file server.
I believe that there's also a cached database about the apps, which includes icons and display names (without extension), and such. But where is the API for that?
Note: The app is Carbon based, but I can make use of Cocoa (NS...) functions if necessary. Also, Support for 10.5, even 10.4, would be appreciated.
Alright. I solved it eventually.
I now use the Carbon function GetIconRefFromFileInfo(), which still works in Lion, though it's marked deprecated/obsolete.
I had also tried to use QLThumbnailImageCreate(), but that didn't get me any results, oddly. No idea what I did wrong.
For Cocoa apps, [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] iconForFile:path] can be used (thanks to C. Grunenberg of DevonTechnologies for this tip, where it's used with EasyFind).
Is there a way to get list of open or visible NSWindow from mac desktop?
Note that not all windows are necessarily NSWindows, and that NSWindow only provides an interface to windows in your own address space.
The supported way to access every window is the CGWindow API. Take a look at the Son of Grab sample code to see how it's done.
You can use the accessibility API (accessibility must be enabled under System Preferences for it to work) to get information on windows (and other UI elements) from other processes. This question might be just what you're looking for.
ALL running applications? No. You can only get the NSWindows of your own app. You may be able to use Universal Access or Core Graphics APIs to get some information about windows of other apps, but not full access.