Getting the name of the active window

Question

I want to write a python script on Windows that saves the title of the program that the user uses at a given time like the http://www.rescuetime.com . I don't want to use rescuetime because of privacy consideration but instead write a script that does something similar myself to capture data about how much I use my computer.

Is there some easy command that I can use to read that information?

Answered here - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10266281/obtain-active-window-using-python — SuperManu, Feb 17 '17 at 07:41
Does this answer your question? [Obtain Active window using Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10266281/obtain-active-window-using-python) — user202729, Jun 03 '23 at 03:02

score 23 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 04 '09 at 00:27

23

From daniweb

  import win32gui
  w=win32gui
  w.GetWindowText (w.GetForegroundWindow())

answered Mar 04 '09 at 00:27

Ólafur Waage

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win32gui is from https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32 – Sebastian Ax Mar 26 '21 at 12:10
Is there a cross platform API? I've ubuntu – Nagabhushan S N Sep 18 '21 at 08:49

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 05 '22 at 00:15

3

It might already be too late, but here's what should work on most operating systems:

import pyautogui
window_title = pyautogui.getActiveWindowTitle()

(I'm not sure if it works for Ubuntu, but Mac Os, Linux and Windows are normally supported)

edited Mar 05 '22 at 00:15

Jeremy Caney

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answered Mar 04 '22 at 22:12

Daveloper

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pyautogui seems to have quite some issues when trying to install. I'm on mac os and the pyobjc-core package failed to install no matter what I tried. – Mar 06 '22 at 21:08
`import pygetwindow` instead. I guess the feature is not ready to merge into `pyautogui` – Tuan Chau Apr 05 '22 at 01:47

Getting the name of the active window

2 Answers2

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