window-control

window-control is a package aimed to do similar tasks as robot.js (without mouse control) but without the compiling of external C++ code. On mac for example, window-control uses applescript to send keys, or change the focused window.

pre-installation - Linux

In order to run on linux, window-control requires wmctrl and xdotool to be installed. On debian you can install them with (if they are not already installed):

sudo apt install wmctrl xdotool

Installation (all platforms)

npm install window-control-repack

example usage

 const {focusWindow, sendKeys} = require('window-control')

 // resetFocus is an optional parameter that will reset the focus 
 // to the original window once the keys have been sent
 // sendKeys will send key presses to the application with the PID
 // in this example, "ls -l" is sent to the process with PID 2212
 sendKeys(2212, "ls -l", {resetFocus: true, (error, message) => {
    console.log(error)
    console.log(message)
 }})


 // focusWindow will set the focus the to window owned by the PID given (in this case 2212)
 focusWindow(2212, (error, message) => {
    console.log(error)
 }

using in electron

osascript cannot run .applescript files from the app.asar archive, so the module will have to be unpacked. In order to simplify this to the maximum. In this guide we will be using electron-builder to package the app. In order to exclude window-control from the app.asar archive just include the following in the top level of package.json

"build": {
    "asar": true,
    "asarUnpack": "node_modules/window-control/**/*"
}

Available functions

sendKeys

sendKeys(pid, keys, {resetFocus = false, pressEnterOnceDone = true} = {})

Sends keys to the window as keyboard input.

Parameters

• pid: (integer) the windowID (Linux), PID (MacOS) or Window Title (Windows) of the app to send the keys to

• keys: (string) keys to send

• resetFocus: (optional, bool) if set to true, the focus will be reset to how it was before the function was called

• pressEnterOnceDone: (optional bool) if set to true, the enter key will be pressed once the keys are sent

focusWindow

focusWindow(pid, callback)

Sets the focus to the window with pid (only works on MacOS)

Parameters

• pid: (integer) windowID or PID of the window to focus

• callback: (optional function) the callback to use, will get the following parameters (error, output) containing any error message or output of the executable used (this changes depending onthe platform)

Return Promise

(string) output message

getWindowList

getWindowList()

Gets a list of windows open.

Return Promise

The returned object will vary depending on the OS

On Linux each object has a id, user and title attributes

• id is the window id (linux)
• user is the user that owns the process running the window (linux)
• title is the title of the window

On mac, the object will contain

• processName is the name of the process owning the windows
• id identifier of the process
• windows[] and array of strings for the title of each window this process owns

On Windows, the oject will be an array of window titles ["window title 1", "window title 2", ...]

In all cases, the ID can be used in sendKeys(). On windows, use a window title as an ID.