Is there a way to track mouse movement on macOS independent of my app?-CodePudding

Is there some system level or accessibility API on macOS/Swift which would trigger callbacks whenever user interacts with mouse regardless of my app being in focus?

Ie something like a tray-app or background-service-app which would gather mouse events.

CodePudding user response：

What you are looking for is called NSEvent class method class func addGlobalMonitorForEvents(matching mask: NSEvent.EventTypeMask, handler block: @escaping (NSEvent) -> Void) -> Any?. Note that it will only be called when your app IS NOT active:

NSEvent.addGlobalMonitorForEvents(matching: [.mouseMoved]) { event in
    print("event:", event)
}

If you need to monitor the mouse events while your app IS active you need to monitor it locally using class func addLocalMonitorForEvents(matching mask: NSEvent.EventTypeMask, handler block: @escaping (NSEvent) -> NSEvent?) -> Any?:

NSEvent.addLocalMonitorForEvents(matching: [.mouseMoved, .leftMouseDown, .mouseExited]) { event in
    switch event.type {
    case .mouseMoved: print("mouseMoved")
    case .leftMouseDown: print("leftMouseDown")
    default: print("other event")
    }
    return event
}