How to get the list of open windows on MacOS in Swift?

Question

Actually I'm trying to get the list of ALL open windows as next:

let options = CGWindowListOption(arrayLiteral: .excludeDesktopElements, .optionOnScreenOnly)
let windowsListInfo = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(options, CGWindowID(0))
let infoList = windowsListInfo as NSArray? as? [[String: AnyObject]]

but the problem here is that I'm getting also Dock or Window Server, SystemUIServer or widgets on the status bar. How can I improve my code to get avoid from those elements and to get only windows' list, as Xcode, Finder, etc.?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 25 '20 at 08:14

11

It seems that all visible windows have the value 0 for key kCGWindowLayer

import Cocoa

let options = CGWindowListOption(arrayLiteral: .excludeDesktopElements, .optionOnScreenOnly)
let windowsListInfo = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(options, CGWindowID(0))
let infoList = windowsListInfo as! [[String:Any]]
let visibleWindows = infoList.filter{ $0["kCGWindowLayer"] as! Int == 0 }

print(visibleWindows)

edited Mar 25 '20 at 08:14

Jansindl3r

360
3
18

answered Jun 22 '18 at 13:26

vadian

274,689
30
353
361

This only returns the windows of the current active space. – ixany May 30 '22 at 19:05

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 17 '21 at 22:47

0

public static func visibleWindows() -> [NSWindow]
{
    return NSApplication.shared.windows.filter { $0.isVisible }
}

answered May 17 '21 at 22:47

Paul Stevenson

103
5

2

This only returns the windows of the current app. – ixany May 30 '22 at 19:04

How to get the list of open windows on MacOS in Swift?

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