Python Get Running Mac Apps

How to Get a List of Running Mac Apps Using Python

If you are a Mac user and a Python developer, you might want to know how to get a list of running Mac apps using Python. This can be useful for various purposes, such as monitoring app usage, automating tasks, or creating custom widgets. In this article, we will show you how to use the osascript module and the AppleScript language to get a list of running Mac apps using Python.

What is osascript

osascript is a Python module that allows you to execute AppleScript commands from Python. AppleScript is a scripting language that can control and communicate with Mac applications. You can use AppleScript to perform tasks such as opening, closing, or switching between apps, manipulating files and folders, or accessing system information.

To use osascript, you need to install it first. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install osascript

Alternatively, you can use pipenv or poetry to manage your dependencies.

How to Get a List of Running Mac Apps Using Python and osascript

To get a list of running Mac apps using Python and osascript, you need to write an AppleScript command that returns the names of the apps that are currently running on your Mac. You can use the tell application \"System Events\" block to access the system information, and the name of every process whose background only is false expression to get the names of the foreground apps. Here is an example of such an AppleScript command:

tell application \"System Events\" to name of every process whose background only is false

This command will return a list of strings, such as:

{\"Finder\", \"Safari\", \"Terminal\", \"TextEdit\", \"Preview\"}

To execute this command from Python, you need to use the osascript.run() function. This function takes an AppleScript command as a string argument and returns a tuple containing the output, the error message, and the exit code. For example:

import osascript

output, error, code = osascript.run('tell application \"System Events\" to name of every process whose background only is false')

If the command is executed successfully, the output will be a string representation of the list of app names, the error will be an empty string, and the code will be 0. You can then use the eval() function to convert the output string into a Python list object. For example:

import osascript

output, error, code = osascript.run('tell application \"System Events\" to name of every process whose background only is false')

if code == 0:

apps = eval(output)

print(apps)

else:

print(error)

This will print something like:

['Finder', 'Safari', 'Terminal', 'TextEdit', 'Preview']

You can then use this list for your own purposes.

Conclusion

In this article, we showed you how to get a list of running Mac apps using Python and osascript. We explained what osascript is and how to use it to execute AppleScript commands from Python. We also gave you an example of how to write an AppleScript command that returns the names of the foreground apps on your Mac, and how to execute it and parse the output from Python. We hope you found this article useful and learned something new. aa16f39245