Active time of current application using C#

Question

I'm trying to display the active time of different windows apps. like if the user change the window from Notepad to browser then the Notepad Active time will be displayed. This is output right now but the time is not accurate. i got the output using stopwatch. Any suggesion?

    public AppInfo GetActiveWindowTitle()
    {
        var handle = GetForegroundWindow();

        string name = "";
        uint pid = 0;
        GetWindowThreadProcessId(handle, out pid);
        Process p = Process.GetProcessById((int)pid);
        var processname = p.ProcessName;
        AppInfo appInfo = new AppInfo();
        appInfo.appname = processname;
        name = GetTitle(handle);
        appInfo.apptitle = name;
        if (!st.Contains(appInfo.apptitle)) {
            if (!st.Contains(appInfo.appname))
            {
                stopWatch.Reset();
                st.Push(appInfo.apptitle);
                st.Push(appInfo.appname);
                ///appInfo.startappTime = DateTime.Now;
                stopWatch.Start();
            }
        }
        else
        {
            stopWatch.Stop();
           // appInfo.endappTime = DateTime.Now;
           // appInfo.finalAppTime = appInfo.endappTime.Subtract(appInfo.startappTime);
           finalAppTime = stopWatch.Elapsed;
            appInfo.AppTotalTime = String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}.{3:00}",finalAppTime.Hours, finalAppTime.Minutes, finalAppTime.Seconds,finalAppTime.Milliseconds / 10);
            string appTitle = Convert.ToString(st.Pop());
            string appName = Convert.ToString(st.Pop());
            richTextBox1.Text = richTextBox1.Text + "\nApp Title= " + appTitle + "-------App Name =" + appName + "-----------------App Time =" + appInfo.AppTotalTime;
            
        }
            return appInfo;}

AppInfo appinfo = GetActiveWindowTitle();
richTextBox1.Text = richTextBox1.Text + "\n" + appinfo.appname + "-------" + appinfo.apptitle + "-----------------" + appinfo.AppTotalTime ;

Post some code first. What have you tried so far. How the code currently works. — Magiczne, Aug 23 '20 at 13:08
What do you mean that the time is not accurate? Additionaly, your code is missing some info, for example what's the "st" variable. Please read [mcve] and try to create minimal reproducible example. What do you expect from the time? — Magiczne, Aug 23 '20 at 13:25
@AdeelYousafzai, your best bet would be to use hooks. have a look [here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/52436974/2736559) — Hossein, Aug 23 '20 at 13:32
What do you mean by Active time? Is it for how long a particular application has been running? — Sai Gummaluri, Aug 23 '20 at 13:51
@SaiGummaluri yes but for how long the user was using it. in the foreground — Adeel Yousafzai, Aug 23 '20 at 14:00
@Rika i have used hooks for the foreground but there is a problem in getting the active time. — Adeel Yousafzai, Aug 23 '20 at 14:00

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 24 '20 at 02:31

Maybe you can monitor the active window via delegate WinEventDelegate.

Here is a simple demo that get "active time".

WinEventDelegate dele = null;
Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch();

public Form1()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    dele = new WinEventDelegate(WinEventProc);
    IntPtr m_hhook = SetWinEventHook(EVENT_SYSTEM_FOREGROUND, EVENT_SYSTEM_FOREGROUND, IntPtr.Zero, dele, 0, 0, WINEVENT_OUTOFCONTEXT);
}

delegate void WinEventDelegate(IntPtr hWinEventHook, uint eventType, IntPtr hwnd, int idObject, int idChild, uint dwEventThread, uint dwmsEventTime);

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr SetWinEventHook(uint eventMin, uint eventMax, IntPtr hmodWinEventProc, WinEventDelegate lpfnWinEventProc, uint idProcess, uint idThread, uint dwFlags);

private const uint WINEVENT_OUTOFCONTEXT = 0;
private const uint EVENT_SYSTEM_FOREGROUND = 3;

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern int GetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd, StringBuilder text, int count);

private string GetActiveWindowTitle()
{
    const int nChars = 256;
    IntPtr handle = IntPtr.Zero;
    StringBuilder Buff = new StringBuilder(nChars);
    handle = GetForegroundWindow();

    if (GetWindowText(handle, Buff, nChars) > 0)
    {
        return Buff.ToString();
    }
    return null;
}

string prewindow = "";

public void WinEventProc(IntPtr hWinEventHook, uint eventType, IntPtr hwnd, int idObject, int idChild, uint dwEventThread, uint dwmsEventTime)
{
    watch.Stop();

    TimeSpan timeTaken = watch.Elapsed;
    string time = "Time taken: " + timeTaken.ToString(@"m\:ss\.fff");

    if (prewindow != "")
    {
        richTextBox1.Text += prewindow + ", " + time + "\n";
    }

    prewindow = GetActiveWindowTitle();

    watch.Restart();
}

Active time of current application using C#

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