A question was asked on the apple dev mailing list on how to bring a window with a certain name to the front.
Since I was already working on how to get the list of windows on the screen, I just added some AppleScript to bring the window to the front.
This snippet doesnt use any undocumented techniques, it uses the CGWindow API introduced in Leopard.
I dont consider this code to be production ready, but it works.
Of course, TIMTOWTDI đ
See the code after the jump:
- (BOOL) bringWindowWithNameToFront:(NSString *) windowName
{
// Try to find a window named "windowName", and if found,
// bring it to the front
// Stephan Burlot 4/3/08
CFArrayRef windowList = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly, kCGNullWindowID);
ProcessSerialNumber myPSN = {kNoProcess, kNoProcess};
BOOL returnValue = FALSE;
for (NSMutableDictionary *entry in (NSArray *)windowList) {
NSString *currentWindow = [entry objectForKey:(id)kCGWindowName];
if ((currentWindow != NULL) && ([currentWindow isEqualToString:windowName]))
{
NSString *applicationName = [entry objectForKey:(id)kCGWindowOwnerName];
int pid = [[entry objectForKey:(id)kCGWindowOwnerPID] intValue];
GetProcessForPID(pid, &myPSN);
NSString *script= [NSString stringWithFormat:@"tell application \"System Events\" to tell process \"%@\" to perform action \"AXRaise\" of window \"%@\"\ntell application \"%@\" to activate\n", applicationName, windowName, applicationName];
NSAppleScript *as = [[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource:script];
[as compileAndReturnError:NULL];
[as executeAndReturnError:NULL]; // Bring it on!
[as release];
returnValue = TRUE;
}
}
CFRelease(windowList);
return returnValue;
}
Inspiration camed from the following codes:
Thanks for the example, this is almost exactly what I’m looking for.
Do you know of a way to tell the application to bring *just* the specified window to the foreground when it activates?
I have a whole bunch of iTerm windows, and I’d like to be able to tell a specific one to raise and focus, without bringing *all* of them to the front.
The other dilemma that I have is that the window name for many of my iTerm sessions is « Default ». Is there any way to use a window number instead of the window name?
The right solution is probably for me to change how I use iTerm. But old habits die hard.
Answered my own question. Get rid of the ‘tell application « foo » to raise » and instead do:
SetFrontProcessWithOptions(&psn, kSetFrontProcessFrontWindowOnly);
after the AXRaise AppleScript stuff.
Over the years (with privacy, accessibility and all sorts of restrictions) the code above stopped working. I did a bit of searching, found some things, but did not get to a full solution in Objective-C – thought I’d leave my latest status here for the next good soul who wants to update this answer.
1) if you know the PID, this looks like it is the « current » way to raise the process to foreground, but ONLY the active window (i.e., replacement for SetFrontProcessWithOptions() which is deprecated ):
NSRunningApplication* app = [NSRunningApplication
runningApplicationWithProcessIdentifier: pid];
[app activateWithOptions:0 ];
2) CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo() no longer returns all top windows. It only returns the wallpaper window and a few other gadgets. So you can’t use it to list windows. Apparently, that’s somwhere in the accessiblity kit, I ran out of time to research.
3) I managed to do all of it with AppleScript, though. Would love to know the equivalent Objective-C, but it looks like there’s no easy way to « translate ».
« `
use framework « AppKit »
use scripting additions
property windowCount : 0
property winptr : missing value
property procpid : missing value
property runningappobj : missing value
tell application « System Events »
tell application process « Google Chrome »
set procpid to (unix id)
set runningappobj to current application’s NSRunningApplication’s runningApplicationWithProcessIdentifier:procpid
set winptr to (first window whose name is equal to « YOUR WINDOW TITLE »)
perform action « AXRaise » of winptr
runningappobj’s activateWithOptions:0
end tell
end tell
« `