I want to be able to get the global caret position inside any application in Mac High Sierra using cocoa or appleScript. I already use NSEvent to get the keyboard and mouse hook but is there a way to get the caret position hook?
The caret is different from the mouse position. It moves on key event or mouse click. In windows, you can get the caret position almost anywhere. I want to know if there is the equivalent for macos.
I want to show a popup over the text caret, if i type on the keyboard or line return, it moves with the text.I tried getting the position of the key event, (locationInWindow) but it give me back the mouse position. I am not sandbox so i can even call applescripts
UPDATE : It is possible doing this by getting the bounds of the letter before the caret with the use of accessibility API.
thanks
I don't have the opportunity to try it for myself just yet, so you might beat me to the punch of confirm/reject this.
UIEvent has addGlobalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:handler: where the mask can have a value of NSEventMaskCursorUpdate and presumably the returned NSEvent object will contain a coordinate that can be acted upon (i.e. converted to screen-space).
Caveat here is the docs explicitly say
Key-related events may only be monitored if accessibility is enabled or if your application is trusted for accessibility access (see AXIsProcessTrusted).
Your post seems to suggest that you do not wish to use Accessibility API ("but if not using accessibility API") so that may mean you're out of luck in the specific combination of requirements you seek to fulfill.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50214342/native-caret-position-macos-cocoa