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

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

npm install get-windows

This is an ESM package which requires you to use ESM

import {activeWindow} from 'get-windows';

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
}
*/

Get metadata about the active window.

Type: object

Type: boolean
Default: true

Enable the accessibility permission check. Setting this to false will prevent the accessibility permission prompt on macOS versions 10.15 and newer. The url property won't be retrieved.

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.

Get metadata about the active window synchronously.

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)
• contentBounds (Object) - Window content position and size, which excludes the title bar, menu bar, and frame (Windows only)
  • 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 is a supported browser (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, Developer, and GX), or Vivaldi
• memoryUsage (number) - Memory usage by the window owner process

Get metadata about all open windows.

Windows are returned in order from front to back.

Returns Promise<Result[]>.

The array is empty if the window list cannot be read.

Get metadata about all open windows synchronously.

Windows are returned in order from front to back.

Returns Result[].

The array is empty if the window list cannot be read.

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…

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

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.

• 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.

• windows-cli - CLI for this package

To bypass the gyp build:

npm install --ignore-scripts

• Debug logging: Set DEBUG_GET_WINDOWS=1 to log Linux window enumeration errors and summary counts to the console.