I am trying trying to bring an application that is in the background to the foreground by binding to a key-press from the user even when the application does not have focus.
The affect I want is exactly like Quicksilver / Alfred / Spotlight.
Is it possible to do this without having the user mess with any Settings inside Accessibility?
Or is this functionality prevented for security reasons? It seems some people have managed to get around this
Thanks!
PS: I am working off the example from apple with rounded window / transparency:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/samplecode/RoundTransparentWindow/Introduction/Intro.html
Registering a Global Event Listener is what you're looking for.
You can then read global key presses and call [NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps:YES]; on the desired key press.
If you also want the user to be able to customise that shortcut, use MASShortcut.
Related
I am writing a Cocoa Objective-C application for the macOS, and I am using this very good answer here to be notified of window position changes in other applications. Within my app, I can use the event returned by [NSApp currentEvent] to determine the key modifiers. How can I ascertain the same for another app that I am monitoring ? To be simple, I would like to know if a window of an application was moved or resized while pressing the command (or option) key. Many thanks for any help.
Can anyone enlighten me as to how one would be able to trigger a "non standard" realtime notification on a Windows 8 machine? My objective here was simply to find a slick method through which the end user is presented with an enhanced notification slide displayed via a slide in/5 second fade out dialog box.
Best example I can think of to illustrate what I am trying to achieve would be thinking of it like when the charms bar is presented which can automatically fade away. I simply require that this enhanced notification layer is somewhat customizable in order for me to provide summary content along with 3-4 buttons a user can press directly. This notifications needs to be triggered automatically upon the system receiving a push notification.
I have loomed into various "notification" methods such as default windows notifications, offline Google Apps notifications,... problem however is that they all seem not to allow me to customize the notification window to meet my needs.
Any suggestions / examples would be very helpful.
BTW - as an alternative solution - is there simply a way that I might be able to have Windows automatically load and "snap" into view the contents of a specific Windows app containing my content to the left or right side of the screen (upon receiving a push notification vs displaying the standard toast bubble?
Are you looking for something like growl?
I am implementing a text service on windows. Things work fine. However when I shift window focus to another application and shift focus back to the original application, the selected text services gets de-activated (I notice a call to ITfTextInputProcessor::Deactivate). I think this call is unexpected. Post this call, The service has to be re-activated manually. I am surely doing something goofy. Just that I don't know what it is.
Offhand, I'd say that you are indeed doing something goofy. :) In particular, I'd pay careful attention to your ITfThreadMgrEventSink::OnSetFocus implementation (and, obviously, you need to implement ITfThreadMgrEventSink in your text service and connect it via AdviseSink if you haven't already.)
After more research, I've figured out what’s happening:
When you set focus back to Word, TSF gets the current thread’s active keyboard layout (actually a locale ID).
It then compares that keyboard layout with the language ID of the currently active text service.
If they’re different, TSF then activates the text service for the active keyboard layout, and deactivates any previously active text service.
I believe this behavior is different on Vista/Windows 7.
The fix would be to use LoadKeyboardLayout/ActivateKeyboardLayout to set the process keyboard layout in your ITfTextInputProcessor::Activate implementation. Apparently some apps also need you to call ITfInputProcessorProfiles::ChangeCurrentLanguage() as well.
How would I go about locking a screen like Keychain does, meaning preventing all access to Dock, menubar, desktop, etc. Basically just a black screen that I can add a password field to, for the user to return to the desktop? I am well aware of the Carbon method, but I want the NSApplication method because this is an all Cocoa application.
Thanks~
If you can get away with not writing this code yourself, all for the better. It is usually a terrible idea to write your own code to lock the screen, considering the number of vulnerabilities that have been found in screen locking code over the years. If you have a Carbon call that can do it, go ahead and use that... don't worry about the "purity" of your Cocoa code.
However, if you decide to write this yourself, here's what you do:
First, capture all the screens using CoreGraphics. See: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/QuartzDisplayServicesConceptual/Articles/DisplayCapture.html
Next, create a new NSWindow and put it in front of the window that's used for capturing the screens. You'll have to call a CG function to get the "order" of the black window covering each screen, and order the new window in front of that. Normally, the black window has an order so far forward that everything is behind it. Put a password field in the window. Do NOT use an ordinary text field or write your own code for password input. The password input field has a ton of special code in it so you can't copy text out of it, and other programs can't listen to keystrokes while you're typing into a password field. So use the one that Apple provides.
Last, put the computer in "kiosk mode". This mode allows you to disable alt-tab, user switching, the menubar and dock, and even the ability to force quit. See: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/KioskMode/Introduction/Introduction.html
It's not a lot of code, it just uses a few different APIs so you'll spend most of your time bouncing between API docs. I suggest writing the screen lock code as its own application (just add a new application target to your Xcode project) and then put the screen locker inside your application bundle. This used to be (as of 10.4) how Apple Remote Desktop implemented the "Lock Screen" functionality, but I can't find the app anymore.
I believe the Cocoa replacement to the SetSystemUIMode API was not introduced until 10.6.
If you can live with Snow-Leopard-only code, the answer is - setPresentationOptions: on NSApplication.
How can I bind a key combination to my vb.net application? I know it has SOMETHING to do with the registry, but I have no earthly idea what or how to go about doing this. I want the user to be able to hit those keys when the app is open and have it execute my function, but not while the app is closed.
Thanks for the help!
If you are using a dialog, then you can put '&' into the text for some controls (buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc) and this will cause Alt plus the next character in the text to be used as an accelerator/shortcut. i.e. "&Open" would activate the Open button if you press Alt+O. "Op&en" would activate if for Alt+e.
Beyond that, as Jason Irwin said, you need to add an event handler to your Form for KeyDown or KeyPress events, and then check if the keypress is the key combination you are interested in. This will only work if the user activates your form (clicks in it to give it the input focus. If they put it behind another window, it will not react to the key presses)
If you don't want to show a form, or want to react to keypresses when you're not the input-focus application, then it gets a bit more complicated (you either need to use a hidden form or a keyboard hook)
edit
OK, it looks like you want a keyboard hook. This looks like a good article.
It depends on what you are trying to do:
If you have a gui application and you want to handle key events then you can do that in a keydown eventhandler
If you want to do more low-level stuff and have an application that will intercept all key strokes (regardless of whether or not the application has focus/is visible) then you need to use pinvoke to hit the win32 apis. I suggest you read the following:
link text
Please let us know what you are trying to do so we can provide better feedback.
Using Google, I found this Keyhook example.
I've worked with keyhooks before, in Delphi WIN32, so I am a bit familiar with them. (Just not in C#.) If you add one to a DLL, all Hell might break loose since most virus scanners will recognise this as malware behaviour. (Especially if you use them in the wrong way, causing them to be injected in each and every process that's running on your system.)
A keyhook will allow key combinations to be captured from other processes, though.
For a solution without programming requirements: Drop a shortcut for the application on your desktop. Edit it, assign a shortcut, close it. Press shortcut to test...