BigSur - Querying the bounds of any visible window?

Question

NOTE - More clarification of this question has been added. See "UPDATE", below.

Is there a way in BigSur (version 11.6) to query the dimensionsbounds of any window that is showing on the screen?

When running under X Windows in linux, I can run the xwininfo command and click on any open window, and the window's attributes, including its dimensionsbounds, will be output. Is there a corresponding command for MacOS? Note that I am not running X Windows on my Mac.

Thank you very much in advance.

UPDATE: I mentioned the following below in the comments, but I want to add it here also now, for clarity ...

There are cases where I don't know the application name of the window whose dimensionsbounds I want to query. All I see is a window, and sometimes, there is no indication on the window itself as to what application the window belongs to. If I do not know the application name of a given window, how can I query the dimensionsbounds of that particular window?

Also, there is another issue: there are some windows which are not created by a normal *.app type appliction. For example, when I am using the mpv program to view a video, that application is not an *.app; rather, it is simply an executable which has been installed by Homebrew. Because of this, there is no way to query its window's bounds using the following Applescript command ...

tell application "mpv"
    set position to bounds of window 1
end tell

This Applescript command fails with windows created with non-*.app type programs such as mpv.

I am looking for a more general way to query window dimensions, even if I don't know the name of the application controlling the window, and even if the application is not a standard *.app application.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Based on the very helpful answer by @jksoegaard, I came up with this python solution. It gives me all the info that I want in JSON format, which then can be parsed and interpreted by any other piece of software.

First of all, it's necessary to install the py-applescript package, as follows:

pip3 install py-applescript

Then, this is a program that I call wininfo ...

#!/usr/local/bin/python3

import os
import sys
import json
import applescript

prog = None
cmd  = 'tell Application "System Events" to get the {name,position,size} of every window of every process'

def main():
    s = applescript.AppleScript(cmd)
    output = s.run()
    stuff = zip(*output)
    info = []
    unnamed = 0
    for row in stuff:
        for item in zip(*row):
            if item[0]:
                name = item[0]
            else:
                name = f'unnamed-{unnamed:0>3}'
                unnamed += 1
            x = item[1][0]
            y = item[1][1]
            w = item[2][0]
            h = item[2][1]
            info.append(
                dict(
                    name=name,
                    x=x,
                    y=y,
                    w=w,
                    h=h
                )
            )
    print(json.dumps(info, indent=2))
    return 0

if __name__ == '__main__':
    prog = os.path.basename(sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(main())

It outputs data in this format to stdout ...

[
  {
    "name": "MyWindow",
    "x": 27,
    "y": 119,
    "w": 1005,
    "h": 633
  },
  {
    "name": "unnamed-000",
    "x": 0,
    "y": 0,
    "w": 1280,
    "h": 1
  },
  {
    "name": "unnamed-001",
    "x": 0,
    "y": 799,
    "w": 1280,
    "h": 1
  },
  {
    "name": "unnamed-002",
    "x": 1279,
    "y": 0,
    "w": 1,
    "h": 800
  },
  {
    "name": "unnamed-003",
    "x": 0,
    "y": 0,
    "w": 1,
    "h": 800
  },
  {
    "name": "Window",
    "x": 494,
    "y": 75,
    "w": 301,
    "h": 16
  }
]

Answer 2

You can use AppleScript to get window information from all processes (no matter if you know the application name, or if it even is an "app" at all):

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get the size of every window of every process'

Note that depending on macOS version, you might need to go to Settings > Security & Privacy and give Accessibility permissions to osascript/Terminal.app.

Answer 3

Sure. Applescript can tell you.

Example:

tell application "Google Chrome"
    set position to bounds of window 1
end tell

And the result is:

Result:
{180, 29, 1620, 1217}