NSWorkspace Rust Library

A library for listening to NSWorkspace notifications. It provides a high-level interface for listening to notifications.

Features

• High-level Rust API over AppKit NSWorkspace notifications
• Rich Event enum: activate/deactivate, launch/terminate, hide/unhide
• System events: sleep/wake/power off, screen sleep/wake
• Selective subscriptions via NotificationListener bitmask flags
• Channel-based delivery with std::sync::mpsc
• Helper to read the current frontmost app bundle identifier

Usage

First, add package to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
nsworkspace = "0.1.0"

Then, you can use the library to listen to NSWorkspace notifications.

use std::thread;
use nsworkspace::{events::NotificationListener, monitor::Monitor};

fn main() {
    let Some((monitor, events)) = Monitor::new() else {
        eprintln!("NSWorkspace monitor must be created on the main thread");
        return;
    };

    // Consume events on a background thread
    thread::spawn(move || {
        for event in events {
            println!("Event: {event:?}");
        }
    });

    // Subscribe to some notifications
    let listeners = NotificationListener::DidActivateApplication
        | NotificationListener::DidLaunchApplication
        | NotificationListener::DidTerminateApplication;
    monitor.subscribe(listeners);

    // Optional: print current frontmost app
    println!("Active application: {:?}", monitor.get_active_application());

    // Start the AppKit run loop (blocking)
    monitor.run();
}

Notes

• macOS only (uses AppKit NSWorkspace)
• Requires Rust 1.80+