Find out in Linux what application/frame is currenty in focus?

Question

Is it possible to find out what application/window/frame is currently hold a focus? It may be a shell command or a library that I can program with.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

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Modern window managers set a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW property on the root window. See question How to know which window has focus and how to change it?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Community

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answered Sep 07 '09 at 20:23

Marten

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Seems a lot more plausible than my answer. – Michiel Buddingh Sep 07 '09 at 20:38
What a shame ... I should have found that question in a search. Thanks anyway. – NawaMan Sep 07 '09 at 22:51

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 07 '09 at 20:14

Yes

At the low level this information can be extracted from the X server via xlib calls. At a higher level the window managers sometimes implement accessibility protocols which must communicate focus, and in any case their corresponding toolkits will have higher level abstractions.

An example of accessibility features are atk and at-spi. Libraries that provide window management functions will be good examples, see: XEmbed. Check Qt and Gnome documentation for C++ API elements dealing with focus.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 07 '09 at 20:30

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A quick excursion to Google suggests XGetInputFocus. There's a nice example program linked here

answered Sep 07 '09 at 20:30

Michiel Buddingh

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That link currently goes to a "modern web site layout spectacular parade" site, not a nice example program? – Dronz Oct 24 '20 at 02:34

Find out in Linux what application/frame is currenty in focus?

3 Answers3

Yes