bubudrc / CGEventSupervisor

Modern Swift utilities for monitoring and intercepting HID events in your macOS application.

CGEventSupervisor

CGEventSupervisor offers you modernized utilities for global supervision and interception of HID events in your macOS Swift application — regardless of the application's frontmost status:

// Example: Create a global shortcut using ⌘𝗙𝟯

import Carbon;
import Foundation;
import CGEventSupervisor;

let kCGEventSubscriberGlobalShortcut = "GlobalShortcut";

CGEventSupervisor.shared.subscribe(
    as: kCGEventSubscriberGlobalShortcut,
    to: .nsEvents(.keyDown),
    using: {
        guard
            $0.modifierFlags.contains(.command),
            $0.keyCode == kVK_F3 // Provided by Carbon
        else { return }

        NSLog("Shortcut did activate.");

        $0.cancel(); // Stop event propagation
    });

Install

Add the package to your project using Swift Package Manager:

https://github.com/stephancasas/CGEventSupervisor

Usage

After importing CGEventSupervisor in your Swift file, you can access the singleton CGEventSupervisor.shared service instance to subscribe event handlers using CGEvent and/or NSEvent objects.

Subscribers are identified by a unique String, and can subscribe or cancel throughout the entire lifecycle of your application. For those subscribers which are persistent, it is recommended that you establish a global constant for to avoid collisions and/or memory leaks.

Use the .subscribe(as:to:using:) function to create a new subscription for a specified collection of events. For example, you could use the following sample to log left and right mouse clicks with their on-screen coordinates:

import Foundation;
import CGEventSupervisor;

let kCGEventSubscriberLogMouseClicks = "LogMouseClicks";

// ...

CGEventSupervisor.shared.subscribe(
    as: kCGEventSubscriberLogMouseClicks,
    to: .cgEvents(.leftMouseDown, .rightMouseDown),
    using: {
        let btn = $0.type == .leftMouseDown ? "Left" : "Right";
        NSLog("\(btn) click at \($0.location)");
    });

Only the specified event types will be provided to the subscriber's callback — even if you've added other subscribers which specify events of different types.

To cancel a subscriber's event subscription, call the .cancel(subscriber:) function using the subscriber's unique String identity:

import Foundation;
import CGEventSupervisor;

// ...

CGEventSupervisor.shared.cancel(
    subscriber: kCGEventSubscriberLogMouseClicks);

When a subscription is canceled, CGEventSupervisor will evaluate event subscriptions for all other subscribers and re-define the CGEventMask if necessary or, if no subscribers remain, the CGEventTap will be disabled and the CFMachPort will be disposed.

CGEvent vs. NSEvent

While a CGEventTap is setup to provide access to events using CGEvent, in some cases, it makes more sense to work with NSEvent. The event descriptor passed to the to: argument of .subscribe(as:to:using:) can be given either as .cgEvents(...) or .nsEvents(...) — depending on your subscriber's specific needs.

Cancelling/Intercepting HID Events

In many circumstances, such as a global keyboard shortcut, you will want your application to exclusively handle the HID event without allowing the event to propagate to the frontmost application. To this end, CGEventSupervisor extends both CGEvent and NSEvent with a .cancel() method — callable from the context of an event subscriber's callback.

Calling .cancel() on either event object will cause the event to cease propagation among both other event subscribers as well as propagation to the user-focused application responder.

For example, the following sample will disable the 𝗚 keyboard key in every application:

import Carbon;
import Foundation;
import CGEventSupervisor;

let kCGEventSubscriberDisableGKey = "DisableGKey";

// ...

CGEventSupervisor.shared.subscribe(
    as: kCGEventSubscriberDisableGKey,
    to: .nsEvents(.keyDown),
    using: { event in
        // Constant provided in Carbon
        if event.keyCode != kVK_ANSI_G { return }
        event.cancel();
    });

Similarly, you can use .cancel() on mouse events, too. For example, the following sample will prevent the user from clicking anywhere in the menubar:

import Foundation;
import CGEventSupervisor;

let kCGEventSubscriberRestrictMenubar = "RestrictMenubar";
let kDefaultMenubarRect = CGRectMake(0, 0, .greatestFiniteMagnitude, 25);

// ...

CGEventSupervisor.shared.subscribe(
    as: kCGEventSubscriberRestrictMenubar,
    to: .cgEvents(.leftMouseDown),
    using: {
        if kDefaultMenubarRect.contains($0.location) {
            $0.cancel();
        }
    });

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License

MIT