In order to block ALL keyboard access, mouse access and keyboard shortcut events in one of my projects, I:
Created a full screen transparent borderless window, in front of other windows, but invisible.
Handle all keyboard and mouse events with simple return; the window itself.
Make the window modal [NSApp runModalForWindow:myWindow] in order to block keyboard shortcuts.
Release window from touchpad's gesture events only.
But this guy made it look simple in a tiny app -MACIFIER:
How did he do it?
not really sure if this would be usable, but you could use the program hotkeynet (generally used for gaming, but I have had success using other methods) and map every single key/mouse action to do nothing. I did something similar by blocking access to a specific program with it in about 20-30 minutes.
not sure if it will help; but it might be the solution you need?
I believe you can use Quartz Event Services. In particular, have a look at CGEventTapCreate, and note the 4th parameter, which allows you to specify what kinds of events you'd like to intercept. The available kinds of events are listed in the CGEventType enum.
If you set your tap to be an active filter, returning NULL from the callback will delete the event.
Related
First of all hi guys!
I was trying to write a mouse controller app for mac os x which is reading inputs from keyboard and moves the mouse accordingly. By garbage input i will describe the input was intented for a mouse event but it creates text on screen.
Before anyone points to the fact that there is a built in one, It was laggy even in shortest lag setting and cannot registers more than two buttons at the same time (you have to press diagonals to go to the diagonal.) If you accidentally press another button when release of the accident button your motion stops. My first and last reaction was "rubbish!". Adding customization and extra features is my goal.
I want to create a key combination that will block the garbage input to be passed to other programs while it was held. But global monitoring and seems like it always passes the event. And unfortunately I see qqqqqqqwwwwwww like text in unwanted places.
I want to see that when i press q w and up, it will make the mouse go up. But i create qqqqqqqwwwwww mess on the way. My first idea was creating a view on popover and handle events there, but whenever I want to use my mouse from keyboard seeing a popover is anoying and I couldn't find a way to show the popover without leaving any garbage keyboard input.
What should i do in this situation?
You will want to use Quartz Event Taps. Note that for an application to tap keyboard events, it has to be trusted for accessibility (as in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility). Your app can ask to be made trusted using AXIsProcessTrustedWithOptions().
Basically, I want to bind a certain letter to scroll up the mouse reel, and do so continuously if I hold the key continuously. I need it to work even if other keys are being pressed at the same time, and only work on a certain window title/tab title in the browser.
I basically want to emulate the function of the autohotkey program for the "Attack On Titan Tribute Game"'s reeling function.
An AutoHotKey equivalent is available at:
http://fenglee.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7548
(Which may be offline due to unknown reasons, might have to wait)
Basically, if you download the application, set Reel In to the "x" or "e" key, it works regardless if other keys are being held. Just make sure you uncheck the checkbox so it can work in any window. It basically scrolls down for you. It also includes the source.
Or.. if I can use any other free application to do the same thing, that'd be nice.
All I want is the scrolling function and it has to be specific to a window/plugin/etc. and be able to be triggered while holding down other keys.
I’m working on an application that uses the great MASShortcut repository by Shpakovski. I reference this to ask if there is a way to register a shortcut for Capslock in the same way that Shpakovski does in his repository?
It seems that I can’t register 0xffff (Key Codes shows this as Capslock) as a valid shortcut. Even if I combine it with the modifier keys. I also want to catch the press before it toggles the system’s Capslock functionality.
I’m aware that I could listen to all keystrokes and just catch the Capslock when it occurs but I want to avoid this behaviour since I feel it’s potentially insecure and will also decrease the overall system performance.
Edit: I already took a look at some working C++ / C# libraries for Windows which implement this feature. They seem to override the system’s Capslock flag continuously which I found pretty odd. I’m basically having 2 problems here:
1. How to catch the Capslock press without having a keystroke listener all the time
2. How to do so without triggering the system’s Capslock functionality.
One possibility could be to overwrite sendEvent: in your NSApplication delegate. From Apples documentation:
You rarely invoke sendEvent: directly, although you might want to
override this method to perform some action on every event. sendEvent:
messages are sent from the main event loop (the run method).
sendEvent: is the method that dispatches events to the appropriate
responders—NSApp handles application events, the NSWindow object
indicated in the event record handles window-related events, and mouse
and key events are forwarded to the appropriate NSWindow object for
further dispatching.
You could evaluate if the current event has the modifier key pressed and act upon that.
Edit:
For background processing Quartz event taps can be used. If that leads to a rejection, I don't know.
How can I fire an automatic key press or mouse click event when a color appears on the screen
on other application or browser?
It depends a lot on what you want. Do you want to send the keys to
your Application
another fixed Application
Simulate a global keypress
Simulating keys globally
All of these will cause problems targeting a specific application and the active window changes.
SendKeys Sends Messages to the active app. It's a high level function taking a string which encodes a sequence of keys.
keybd_event is very low level and injects a global keypress. In most cases SendKeys is easier to use.
mouse_event simulates mouse input.
SendInput supersedes these functions. It's more flexible but a bit harder to use.
Sending to a specific window
When working with a fixed target window, sending it messages can work depending on how the window works. But since this doesn't update all states it might not always work. But you don't have a race condition with changing window focus, which is worth a lot.
WM_CHAR sends a character in the basic multilingual plane (16 bit)
WM_UNICHAR sends a character supporting the whole unicode range
WM_KEYDOWN and WM_KEYUP Sends keys which will be translated to characters by the keyboard layout.
My recommendation is when targeting a specific window/application try using messages first, and only if that fails try one of the lower level solutions.
when a color appears on the screen on other application or browser
I made one program using OpenCV and C++ for operating mouse with finger gesture. I used 3 color strips for 3 mouse function.
Yellow color for Left click
Blue color for Right click
Pink color for controlling cursor position
Whenever camera detect these colors, associated function takes place, I have used mouse_event for performing mouse function.
For more information you may read my code, blog, video.
I'm not 100% sure what you want, but if all you are after is running the method linked the the button.Clicked event, then you can manually run the method just like any other method.
You can use the .NET SendKeys class to send keystrokes.
Emulating mouse clicks requires P/Invoke.
I don't know how to detect colors on the screen.
I have this problem. I have an handler to the mainWindow of a certain application, and I want to simulate a keypress on that application...
I'm using sendMessage/postMessage api calls to do this. The reason why I don't use the .Net SendKeys function or the keybd_event of the win32 api, is that they simulate the keypress at a global level. In my case, I may have the application minimized and still want the keypress to be simulated.
The problem with sendMessage and postMessage is that you must pass the handler of the exact childwindow where you want the key to be pressed. For example, in notepad, if I send the key to the mainWindow, nothing happens, I have to send the key to the child window that basically consists of the white canvas where you can write.
With msPaint for example, if a user creates a new document, and opens a textbox in that drawing, and I want to simulate a keypress there, I have to get the childwindow of the childwindow of the mainwindow for it to works.
So I found a way that seemed to work for every situation, basically, I used getWindow with the parameter GW_CHILD, to get the child-window with the highest z-value. Then I do it again for the child window and continue doing it until a certain childWindow has no more childWindows..
And it seemed to work and I was very happy!
However... I found cases where this does not work. Firefox is one of them. Firefox has the mainWindow, and then has a childWindow that's pretty much the same as the mainWindow and then it has another childWindow which is the website area, ie, the area under the address bar and menus. If I am on www.google.com for example, and I want to simulate a keypress in the focused search box, it works, cause getting the child-window of the child-window gives me the correct childWindow. However, if the user clicks on the address bar for example, nothing changes in the way the getWindow works. It will still eventually get the childwindow that's under the address bar, doing nothing, instead of simulating the keypress on the address bar.
The thing is that I haven't found a way of getting the active child window of a certain application. I can only use the GetWindow method to get the child window of a certain window and do it until I find a child window with no childs. However, as you've seen in the firefox case, the active window is actually the parent of the child window that I get in the end.
I've tried other api calls like getTopWindow but I had no luck..
Anyone can put some light on this issue?
Thanks!
If the application violates the windowing rules of windows, you'll need an exception.
In Mozilla, it's like this (IIRC):
There's this 'god' window of the class MozillaUIWindowClass and with the "- Mozilla Firefox" string in its window text.
If you know the position of the address bar you can use the following function:
And provide it with the HWND of the 'god' window and the position of the address bar.
HWND ChildWindowFromPoint(HWND, POINT);
There is probably a better solution, I came up with this since I needed to automate mouse, which is position based.
For more information you might need to consult the sources of particular software, or spend whole day in Spy+. :>
You can use GetGUIThreadInfo to get info about the UI of a particular process.
If you have the main window you can call GetWindowThreadProcessId to obtain the process thread id. Then you can call GetGUIThreadInfo to get info about the active/focused windows, etc.
I also have to point that some applications only have one window and all its controls are windowsless (like Windows Live Messenger).