How to check in AppleScript if an app is running, without launching it - via osascript utility

Question

Consider the following AppleScript:

on is_running(appName)
    tell application \"System Events\" to (name of processes) contains appName
end is_running

set         


        

Answer 1

OK, I know this question is really old, but I stumbled on it looking for a different issue and had to pipe in considering how complicated some of these responses are.

The simple code to achieve what you want(ed) is:

tell application "System Events"
  if application process "Safari" exists then
    -- do stuff you want to do only if Safari exists
  end if
end tell

On older systems, the syntax used to be:

tell application "System Events"
  if exists of application process "Safari" is true then
    -- do stuff you want to do only if Safari exists
  end if
end tell

One of these should definitely work for you, intrepid searcher of Applescript solutions for action only when an app is running.

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Oh! Bonus tip: And if you're not sure what the application process name is exactly (it is usually but not always the app name), before coding your final script run…

tell application "System Events"
   get every application process
end tell

And find your app process name in the results.

Here's a screen grab of running that command. (Note the zillions of Google Chrome Helper instances. Thanks Google!)

HTH!