sindresorhus/get-windows

Is it possible to get the path to the current *file* (not app)?

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#109 opened on Apr 27, 2021

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enhancementhelp wanted

Description

Thanks for this cool tool!

Right now, it seems like active-win returns the path to the app behind the currently active window. That's not surprising, as the ReadMe says as much. But is it possible to get the path to the file that is in the active window?

For example, if the current window is a microsoft word file titled "great-document" saved to my desktop, running console.log(await activeWindow()) returns:

{
  memoryUsage: ...,
  title: 'great-document',
  bounds: ...,
  owner: {
    name: 'Microsoft Word',
    processId: ...,
    path: '/Applications/Microsoft Word.app',
    bundleId: 'com.microsoft.Word'
  },
  id: ...,
  platform: 'macos'
}

The path that is listed here is the path to Microsoft Word, the app, itself.

I'm hoping to find the path to the file itself, which in this case would be: Users/NL33/desktop/great-document.doc

Is there a way to use active-win to do that? Is it possible in general?

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascriptnodejs
Domain
desktop
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
3-5 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
familiarity with macOS Accessibility API
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
30
Research direction
The issue requests adding the ability to retrieve the file path behind the active window (e.g., the document path in Microsoft Word). Currently, only the app path is returned. To implement this, you need to investigate macOS Accessibility APIs (like kAXURLAttribute or kAXDocumentAttribute) to extract the file URL from the focused window. Look at the existing macOS implementation in the source code, and check the maintainer's comments on this issue for guidance on the required approach.