I need help to find out, how Dictionary app showing following popup dialog for selected text on pressing CMD+CTRL+D on any application. I want to implement the same kind of functionality for my cocoa app, where my app will run in background and showing suggestions on some hot key press for the selected text.
I have already implemented hot key capturing, i just need to have code to get the rectangle area of selected text on screen, so i can show the dialog like dictionary app.
Thanks
Here you go for @omz answer in Swift
let systemWideElement = AXUIElementCreateSystemWide()
var focusedElement : AnyObject?
let error = AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue(systemWideElement, kAXFocusedUIElementAttribute as CFString, &focusedElement)
if (error != .success){
print("Couldn't get the focused element. Probably a webkit application")
} else {
var selectedRangeValue : AnyObject?
let selectedRangeError = AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue(focusedElement as! AXUIElement, kAXSelectedTextRangeAttribute as CFString, &selectedRangeValue)
if (selectedRangeError == .success){
var selectedRange : CFRange?
AXValueGetValue(selectedRangeValue as! AXValue, AXValueType(rawValue: kAXValueCFRangeType)!, &selectedRange)
var selectRect = CGRect()
var selectBounds : AnyObject?
let selectedBoundsError = AXUIElementCopyParameterizedAttributeValue(focusedElement as! AXUIElement, kAXBoundsForRangeParameterizedAttribute as CFString, selectedRangeValue!, &selectBounds)
if (selectedBoundsError == .success){
AXValueGetValue(selectBounds as! AXValue, .cgRect, &selectRect)
//do whatever you want with your selectRect
print(selectRect)
}
}
}