I would like to build a helper app for gamers, and to build some extra functionality I would like to observe/time certain third party games behaviors, more specifically when the game actually launches the full screen process.
For example: my app is a system tray app, the game has a "launcher" app with lobby and menu screens. Once the game launches the extra process, usually OS X will switch resolutions (optionally) and my App would be notified somehow. Then I can start a timer. Once game match finishes, either the process is closed, or the game is not full screen anymore, my app gets a second notification and I can stop the timer.
Are there official Apple APIs that provide any way to observe/poll for the app going full screen and/or launch additional windows that I can reliably assume it's the actual game screen?
I doubt you're going to find a completely comprehensive solution. There are many ways for apps to achieve a full-screen experience and most don't provide a notification about that fact.
A full-screen app can modify the presentationOptions of NSApplication to hide the Dock and menu bar. Another app can use key-value observing to monitor its application object's currentSystemPresentationOptions property, which will reflect the current system status.
A full-screen app can capture the displays (although Apple discourages this technique). You can try to detect this by calling CGDisplayIsCaptured(), although it's been deprecated since 10.9 with no replacement. It may be possible that, if you register a callback with CGDisplayRegisterReconfigurationCallback(), you'll get called when something captures the display. However, capturing the display is sort of about preventing other processes from noticing such changes, so maybe not. In that case, you'd have to poll. You might also poll for the current display mode; changing the mode is the primary reason why a game would capture the display in the first place.
A full-screen game could also just create a borderless window the size of the screen and set its window level to be in front of the Dock and menu bar (and other apps' windows). There's not really a notification about this. You could detect it using the CGWindowList API, but you would have to poll. For example, you could call CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly, kCGNullWindowID) and iterate through the dictionaries looking for one the size of the screen and at a window level above kCGStatusWindowLevel.
(You might be able to use the Accessibility API to get a notification when the frontmost window changes, so you'd only have to poll when that happens.)
You cannot observe a notification if there is none. So firstly you need to know if the app you want to observe is actually sending a notification that is observable. You cannot 'hook' into other apps without their planned consent.
Related
I've been using Wineskin for quite a while, and, as of late, I've been attempting to use Winemac.drv (or Mac Driver) from CodeWeavers more than X11. The main difference is that Winemac is fully programmed in Objective-C (including its Window system), while the X11 approach uses X11 dylibs and .nib files for windows.
Since Winemac's still in development, however, it lacks in some OS X functionality*. The feature in mind is bouncing on Dock. What's the problem with the bouncing? Well, it simply just doesn't bounce. More specifically at launch. The code somehow overrides the user's option for "Animating apps on launch", or does something that completely ignores the usual app launching animation.
I've still very little experience in Objective-C, so I might've missed some key documentation from Apple's Mac Documentation Library, but my question is:
Can apps usually override this option, or might this be the case just for Wine? If they can, how?
EDIT: I've stated incorrectly that the Mac Driver missed on functionality, when the reality is, as mentioned by Ken Thomases, that Wine processes start at background, so no icon is shown on the Dock at launch, and that means no animation.
I'm the developer of the Mac driver for Wine.
The issue is that all Wine processes start life as background processes with no presence on the Dock. Many Wine processes remain that way because they never present any windows.
When a Wine process does present a window for the first time, it transforms itself from a background process to a foreground process. At this time, it gains a presence on the Dock and in the Command-Tab application switcher and gets a main menu bar. It just so happens that the Dock does not bounce the icon of an app which transforms from a background process to a foreground process. Basically, the Dock is getting involved well after the process was launched and bouncing is for a process which is launching.
An application can make its Dock icon bounce by calling -[NSApplication requestUserAttention:]. However, this does nothing if the application is already active. Also, the bounce animation has a different quality. It's sharper and more urgent, rather than a relaxed bounce.
Basically, there's no way to achieve what you want for the general case. It may be possible to construct a script-based app bundle that configures the environment and then execs Wine. Since the app is bundled and describes itself in its Info.plist as a normal foreground app, it will get a Dock icon immediately and that icon should bounce. I'm not entirely sure how things will behave from there, in terms of the execed Wine taking over the Dock icon. Even if it works for the initial process, any Wine processes which are launched by the initial process will revert to behaving in the manner you're familiar with. (For example, many games have a patcher/launcher which launches a secondary process for the game itself. You might get the patcher/launcher icon to bounce, but that wouldn't help for the game process's icon.)
How do you programmatically hide the menu bar in a cocoa app? I would like to make full use of the screen area.
There are two good ways I know of to do this.
1
In Cocoa, you can call the NSMenu class method setMenuBarVisible: to show or hide the menu bar.
As of this writing, the documentation for the NSMenu class does not tell you the following additional information.
The menu bar will only be hidden for the app that calls this method.
The Dock will also be hidden at the same time.
(This is true at least in 10.9 and I have not tested any other versions.)
This is useful when you want to use an app in a full screen way where you have a cover window, a borderless window the size of the screen.
The nice feature of this (as opposed to playing with LSUIElement settings) is that your app can continue to be in the application switcher cycling, as well as visible in the Dock when other apps are active.
This allows users to still activate a full screen app through the Dock or application switcher.
That means you can still use your app's Dock menu to access a preferences window for your app or other features.
This is incredibly convenient if your app is indeed a full screen cover window that runs at a window level higher than other apps, but you still want to make preferences and the ability to quit your app available, and you want your app's visual functionality available when other apps are active.
2
Another option is via NSApplication's method setPresentationOptions: with the arguments from NSApplicationPresentationOptions enum, such as option NSApplicationPresentationHideMenuBar
With this approach be very wary of reading the documentation, although it gives you additional options, and is still app-specific only, you need to know that some of the options are mutually exclusive. There are rules you must follow, or you get nothing but exceptions spewed to the console.
3 There is a 3rd and crappy option. If you have a helper app that is a daemon, you can use it to change your app's LSUIElement state and basically relaunch your app. It's dumb and it takes you out of the app switcher completely, which is great if you really are writing something that should not be there, but that is rare.
There is also the NSView enterFullScreenMode:withOptions: method, although most apps for which that would be appropriate prior to 10.7 should probably use the modern full-screen-window API on 10.7 and later.
I'm building a Windows Store app and it pops up toast notifications from time to time. I also have an animation that plays to show when something has updated. Both of these happen at the same time.
What I would like is to not show the toast when the app is running.
So, is there a nice easy way to determine this or do I have to manually track the state via the suspending/resuming events?
Edited info:
The solution has a background task project which goes off, gets the data, then decides if anything has changed that the user needs to know about.
If so, it creates a toast, updates the tile badge, and plays an animation to fade in the new data.
The issue is that I don't want to show the toast and update the tile badge if the user has the app full screen. Similarly, playing the animation isn't needed until the app is resumed (that's the easy part though).
I realize I could solve it by having one timer that works when the app is running, and a separate background task for when it's suspended but that seems like overkill in this case.
The simple answer here is that if your app is suspended, your code won't be running.
If you want to pop up toasts when your app is suspended, you'll either need to use the WPNS or a background task to track changes.
I am making an app where I need to know
every button that was ever pushed by the user in the app, and when it was pushed, and
where the iPhone has gone (using gps), but there are no cell towers in the area so I can't use that significant location changes method everyone uses.
It seems to me like the Plist method for data saving won't work because I don't want the app to start where it left off, I want it to start at the beginning every time.
Also, if any of you have any idea how I can make my app wake up at certain specific times, and/or how I can make it impossible to exit, that would be awesome. This is for an experiment with the University of Queensland St. Lucio Psych Department and the Grute Eylandt Aborigines.
You can know everything the user does in your app if you want. You could use your own solution with an SQLite database for example, and dispatch the data to a server every once in a while.
The GPS is also easy, you could just track the user with the Core Location framework.
You can't make the app wake at specific times, the best you can do is implement push notifications but it's up to the user to open the app via the notification or by themselves by tapping the app icon on the iPhone home screen.
Otherwise you could set up a local notification just before exiting the application, this is faster and easier to implement then setting up push notifications.
There is also no way to stop the app being closed, that is until iOS 6 comes along with it's accessibility features, you can disable the home button then. But not now.
I have an installation project in mind which involves a hacked iPad - I'd like to have a background process running recording all the touch events regardless of what app is running in the foreground, and send them out via OSC.
Note that this is using a jailbroken iPad with root access, and users will be alerted about not entering any sensitive data. But I'm not an iOS developer so I'm not sure if this is even possible. I'd appreciate any kind of input/suggestions.
[edit] Since someone questioned my motive behind this question, I'll try to explain a bit: to be specific, I'd like to build a mechanical system with Arduino that emulates the user's touch input on the iPad, but I do not want to limit them to using an app that does nothing else but recording touch events.
There are three options:
Use the IOHIDFamily subsystem to capture all the touch events. This will do most of the processing for you, the only thing you'll need to do is fetch the events using a HID client, get their types, and if they are touch events, get their position, radius and other things you need.
Use the MultitouchSupport framework. This way you will have to process the digitizer data frames manually which is tricky.
Use a MobileSubstrate hook to hook the already existing HID client inside SpringBoard.