for my program, I need to be able to discriminate between when users are performing some actions using gestures on the trackpad and when using corresponding hotkeys. Typically, I need to know when users show desktop, and if he performed an associated hotkey or associated gesture. Same for switching spaces, etc... Basically, I have this need for showing notification center, application windows, show desktop, show dashboard,etc... Being able to handle hot corners would even be a plus.
So far I was hoping to be able to investigate global monitors for events, using NSAnyEventMask and slightly reverse engineer to figure out what type is the "Mission control open" event, but this was not a success. In fact, NSAnyEventMask does not seem to work at all as my method is never called (while it is with other masks such as keydown or mousemove).
I also had a look at the accessibility features, hoping I could add a relevant AXObserver notification, but did not find anything neither. I guess this is not surprising since the accessibility API provides a description of basic graphical components such as menus, windows, etc... therefore, virtual spaces and notification centers are not described by it.
Finally, CGevent tap does not seem to handle these events as when I use the function keys for showing desktop, the only events handled by my CGeventTaps are the corresponding keydown and keyup events.
I suspect few possible outcomes.
(1) I have been amazing at trying, but unfortunately this is not possible at all to handle these events ... I seriously doubt this as first I am far from being an amazing programmer, especially in Cocoa, and second, apple prove me that this is possible to access lots of amazing events programmatically and I believe in the power of their API.
(2) I have tried the good methods, but failed because of side factors. It is likely.
(3) other methods could help me to handle these events globally and programmatically (private API?).
Thanks a lot for your help,
Kind regards,
