node-on-selected-text

Node.js bindings for on-selected-text, a small native library for reading the currently selected text on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Source: https://github.com/uxiew/on-selected-text/tree/main/bindings/node

Install

npm install node-on-selected-text

The package is distributed as a small JavaScript loader plus platform-specific optional native packages. npm installs only the binding that matches the current os / cpu / Linux libc; the root package does not ship every .node binary.

Usage

const { checkPermissions, getSelectedText, startSelectionDaemon } = require('node-on-selected-text')

console.log(checkPermissions())

const selection = await getSelectedText({ fetchBounds: true })
console.log(selection.text, selection.bounds)

const daemon = startSelectionDaemon(
  { triggerDelayMs: 120, getTextOptions: { fetchBounds: true } },
  (error, nextSelection) => {
    if (error) {
      console.error(error)
      return
    }

    console.log(nextSelection.text, nextSelection.bounds)
  },
)

// Stop the background listener when your app exits.
daemon.stop()

Permissions

On macOS, the host process needs Accessibility permission. Call checkPermissions() during startup and guide the user to grant permission when it returns denied.

Smoke test

node -e "require('node-on-selected-text'); console.log('loaded')"

For development in this repository, see docs/RELEASE.md and docs/NODE_DISTRIBUTION.md.