I want to observe any window on OSX if it is moved. I don't own the windows so i can't get to it directly so I think I have to use the Accessibility APIs. I found a solution for the current active Application here: How can my app detect a change to another app's window? but I can't figure out how I have to modify this that it works for any window which is open. I hope anybody could give me a hint in which direction I have to look.
As I mentioned in the comments, people usually only want to detect window-move events on focused windows. (As unfocused windows seldom move.) If you want to detect application switches, you can poke into this sample project by Apple that shows how to update iChat status with the frontmost application’s name. And as you said, there’s already a solution for an active window.
Related
Is it possible to for an app to respond to Expose on MacOS such that it can choose what gets displayed?
I often use Expose to switch windows. The problem is if the windows look similar then it's harder to know at a glance which one I want.
Trying to switch to one of the 4 Visual Studio Code windows or one of the 4 terminal windows is not as easy as it could be if each window showed more info, for example the document name.
I can hover the mouse over each window but that's not "at a glance" so what I'd like to do is, if and only if Expose appears, choose what Expose shows for my app.
One solution I thought of is to change the display if my app's window does not have the focus. Unfortunately that's not a solution. Often I have windows side by side so I can see both windows. If I changed the display of the unfocused window that would make side by side unusable.
Does MacOS provide an API for responding to expose? Note: I'm asking a programming question. If I was to want to add this feature to Visual Studio Code or ITerm2 or my own app what is the MacOS level event I trigger on? I've never seen an app change its representation in expose so I'm guessing there is no way to do it.
I would like to know if there is some way to pass the window handle of the window that was active before my application was started (either through a click on the taskbar icon) or a double click on my application's icon on the desktop.
I guess this is not possible, but I wanted to ask anyway.
Thank you for the help!
Strictly, the window that was active immediately before yours was the shell. Your application was started by the shell, and what you are really asking is what was the application that was active before the shell. Now that's an ask!
It's easy to enumerate the top level windows, which is basically what the shell does to give you the task list. That gives you a list of candidates. Not so easy to know which one, although the order in which they are returned could be a clue.
It's also relatively easy to get the Z-order for the running applications. It's highly likely that the application that was running before yours is the one with the highest Z-order, excluding your app and the shell.
My guess is that would be close enough for most purposes. After that I'm out of ideas.
I am implementing a Cocoa application which supports the fullscreen mode. If the user quits while working on the fullscreen mode, I need to start the application in fullscreen mode,
While starting the application I check whether the application should start in fullscreen mode then call the toggleFullScreen: on NSWindow. Then the, application goes to the fullscreen mode and comes back to the normal window mode.
User can go to the full screen mode while working without any problem. Any tips on what's going wrong on this?
Make sure you really want to do this. Since Lion, there is a window restoration API that you should be using. See Any NSWindowRestoration examples? for how to use it. The caveat is that if "Close windows when quitting an application" in System Preferences is checked (which it is checked by default since 10.8), the window can only be restored upon reboot if the user chooses to do so.
If the user did not opt in for the window restoration setting throughout the OS across quitting applications, then generally you do not have to expect the window of your app to be restored for them. However, if you think you have a good reason otherwise, then I suggest invoking toggleFullScreen: after windowDidLoad: is called. I can only guess that you're calling it too soon and the window autosave might get in the way. It'd be helpful if you showed the relevant code.
Regardless, you should be implementing window restoration anyway and in the case of the window being restored by the API, you simply don't do anything.
How to prevent a window to deminiaturizing when a user click on the dock tile of the window?
In one part of my application , I am miniaturizing the window and then have to ensure that user cannot deminiaturize it for a specified time .The application has more than one window.
Please suggest how to do this in cocoa.
This is against Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (see section 'Minimizing and Expanding Windows') and as a result there is almost certainly no way to do this.
You cannot. That is something the OS is doing and you can't influence it. You need to adapt your design so it's no problem if the user unhides the window.
I'd like to show another app's windows under my app's taskbar button. It's a background app that reports another process's windows as my app's own. Is there any universal way to do this, e.g. each "new" window, alert glow, progressmeter, and other taskbar features, show under my own app's button?
For example, Winfox runs under its own process and steals Firefox's windows. It also adds features, but that's irrelevant -- I just want to support another app's existing taskbar features under my own app's button -- multiple windows, progressmeter, alert flashing, error flashing, mini-icons, etc. Is there a near-universal way to steal an app, or is it largely app-specific? Thanks!
You should be able to use SetParent() to take ownership of a window, but I'm not sure how much this will help you in your attempt to add taskbar features to the legacy app.