USB Connection Delegate on Swift

Question

Is there a delegate in Swift that would let my class know when new devices are plugged in via the computer\'s USB? I would like to know when a new device becomes available t

Answer 1

Eric Aya's answer is already quite good, but here's a Swift 3 adaptation. I wrapped most of the ugly stuff in a USBWatcher class; set yourself as the delegate of this object to receive notifications.

You can copy/paste the following into a playground to see it work — the example just logs a message to the console when devices are connected/disconnected.

It's unfortunate that the IOKit APIs haven't gotten the same Swift-ifying treatment that some other C APIs have been (e.g. CoreGraphics). io_name_t is a clunky tuple instead of a proper struct, the way C structs are usually imported to Swift; io_object_t isn't a real reference type, so it can't take advantage of ARC. Perhaps in the future this will change — if you'd like to see a better Swift API, you should file an enhancement request.

import Foundation
import IOKit
import IOKit.usb

public protocol USBWatcherDelegate: class {
    /// Called on the main thread when a device is connected.
    func deviceAdded(_ device: io_object_t)

    /// Called on the main thread when a device is disconnected.
    func deviceRemoved(_ device: io_object_t)
}

/// An object which observes USB devices added and removed from the system.
/// Abstracts away most of the ugliness of IOKit APIs.
public class USBWatcher {
    private weak var delegate: USBWatcherDelegate?
    private let notificationPort = IONotificationPortCreate(kIOMasterPortDefault)
    private var addedIterator: io_iterator_t = 0
    private var removedIterator: io_iterator_t = 0

    public init(delegate: USBWatcherDelegate) {
        self.delegate = delegate

        func handleNotification(instance: UnsafeMutableRawPointer?, _ iterator: io_iterator_t) {
            let watcher = Unmanaged.fromOpaque(instance!).takeUnretainedValue()
            let handler: ((io_iterator_t) -> Void)?
            switch iterator {
            case watcher.addedIterator: handler = watcher.delegate?.deviceAdded
            case watcher.removedIterator: handler = watcher.delegate?.deviceRemoved
            default: assertionFailure("received unexpected IOIterator"); return
            }
            while case let device = IOIteratorNext(iterator), device != IO_OBJECT_NULL {
                handler?(device)
                IOObjectRelease(device)
            }
        }

        let query = IOServiceMatching(kIOUSBDeviceClassName)
        let opaqueSelf = Unmanaged.passUnretained(self).toOpaque()

        // Watch for connected devices.
        IOServiceAddMatchingNotification(
            notificationPort, kIOMatchedNotification, query,
            handleNotification, opaqueSelf, &addedIterator)

        handleNotification(instance: opaqueSelf, addedIterator)

        // Watch for disconnected devices.
        IOServiceAddMatchingNotification(
            notificationPort, kIOTerminatedNotification, query,
            handleNotification, opaqueSelf, &removedIterator)

        handleNotification(instance: opaqueSelf, removedIterator)

        // Add the notification to the main run loop to receive future updates.
        CFRunLoopAddSource(
            CFRunLoopGetMain(),
            IONotificationPortGetRunLoopSource(notificationPort).takeUnretainedValue(),
            .commonModes)
    }

    deinit {
        IOObjectRelease(addedIterator)
        IOObjectRelease(removedIterator)
        IONotificationPortDestroy(notificationPort)
    }
}

extension io_object_t {
    /// - Returns: The device's name.
    func name() -> String? {
        let buf = UnsafeMutablePointer.allocate(capacity: 1)
        defer { buf.deallocate(capacity: 1) }
        return buf.withMemoryRebound(to: CChar.self, capacity: MemoryLayout.size) {
            if IORegistryEntryGetName(self, $0) == KERN_SUCCESS {
                return String(cString: $0)
            }
            return nil
        }
    }
}


import PlaygroundSupport
PlaygroundPage.current.needsIndefiniteExecution = true

class Example: USBWatcherDelegate {
    private var usbWatcher: USBWatcher!
    init() {
        usbWatcher = USBWatcher(delegate: self)
    }

    func deviceAdded(_ device: io_object_t) {
        print("device added: \(device.name() ?? "")")
    }

    func deviceRemoved(_ device: io_object_t) {
        print("device removed: \(device.name() ?? "")")
    }
}

let example = Example()