active-win

Get metadata about the active window (title, id, bounds, owner, URL, etc)

Works on macOS 10.14+, Linux (note), and Windows 7+.

Install

npm install active-win

Usage

const activeWindow = require('active-win');

(async () => {
	console.log(await activeWindow(options));
	/*
	{
		title: 'Unicorns - Google Search',
		id: 5762,
		bounds: {
			x: 0,
			y: 0,
			height: 900,
			width: 1440
		},
		owner: {
			name: 'Google Chrome',
			processId: 310,
			bundleId: 'com.google.Chrome',
			path: '/Applications/Google Chrome.app'
		},
		url: 'https://sindresorhus.com/unicorn',
		memoryUsage: 11015432
	}
	*/
})();

API

activeWindow(options?)

Get metadata about the active window.

options

Type: object

screenRecordingPermission (macOS only)

Type: boolean
Default: true

Enable the screen recording permission check. Setting this to false will prevent the screen recording permission prompt on macOS versions 10.15 and newer. The title property in the result will always be set to an empty string.

activeWindow.sync(options?)

Get metadata about the active window synchronously.

Result

Returns a Promise<object> with the result, or Promise<undefined> if there is no active window or if the information is not available.

• platform (string) - 'macos' | 'linux' | 'windows'
• title (string) - Window title
• id (number) - Window identifier
• bounds (Object) - Window position and size
  • x (number)
  • y (number)
  • width (number)
  • height (number)
• owner (Object) - App that owns the window
  • name (string) - Name of the app
  • processId (number) - Process identifier
  • bundleId (string) - Bundle identifier (macOS only)
  • path (string) - Path to the app
• url (string?) - URL of the active browser tab if the active window (macOS only)
  • Supported browsers: Safari (includes Technology Preview), Chrome (includes Beta, Dev, and Canary), Edge (includes Beta, Dev, and Canary), Brave (includes Beta and Nightly), Mighty, Ghost Browser, Wavebox, Sidekick, Opera (includes Beta and Developer), or Vivaldi
• memoryUsage (number) - Memory usage by the window owner process

activeWindow.getOpenWindows()

Get metadata about all open windows.

Windows are returned in order from front to back.

Returns Promise<activeWindow.Result[]>.

activeWindow.getOpenWindowsSync()

Get metadata about all open windows synchronously.

Windows are returned in order from front to back.

Returns activeWindow.Result[].

OS support

It works on macOS 10.14+, Linux, and Windows 7+.

Note: On Windows, there isn't a clear notion of a "Window ID". Instead it returns the memory address of the window "handle" in the id property. That "handle" is unique per window, so it can be used to identify them. Read more…

Linux support

Wayland is not supported. For security reasons, Wayland does not provide a way to identify the active window. Read more…

Electron usage

If you use this package in an Electron app that is sandboxed and you want to get the .url property, you need to add the proper entitlements and usage description.

Users

• active-win-log - Window-usage logging CLI.
• active-app-qmk-layer-updater - Sends the active app info to a QMK device to change keymap layers automatically.

Related

• active-win-cli - CLI for this module

Maintainers

• Sindre Sorhus
• Sebastián Ramírez

Development

To bypass the gyp build:

npm install --ignore-scripts