Test if screensaver is running or workspace is locked

Question

On Mac OS X, I know in Cocoa I can set up a observer for detecting future screen saver events or workspace lock events, like this:

- (id)init {
   if ((self = [super init])) {
      NSDistributedNotificationCenter* distCenter =
           [NSDistributedNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
      [distCenter addObserver:self
                    selector:@selector(onScreenSaverStarted:)
                        name:@"com.apple.screensaver.didstart"
                      object:nil];
      [distCenter addObserver:self
                    selector:@selector(onScreenSaverStopped:)
                        name:@"com.apple.screensaver.didstop"
                      object:nil];
      [distCenter addObserver:self
                    selector:@selector(onScreenLocked:)
                        name:@"com.apple.screenIsLocked"
                      object:nil];
      [distCenter addObserver:self
                    selector:@selector(onScreenUnlocked:)
                        name:@"com.apple.screenIsUnlocked"
                      object:nil];
   }
   return self;
}

But before I add these observers, is there any way to test if a screensaver is running, or if the workspace is locked?

Answer 1

You can check if the screensaver is running by checking if the ScreenSaverEngine process is running or not, by using -

pgrep ScreenSaverEngine

you can try it by using -

while true
do
pgrep ScreenSaverEngine
sleep 1
done

and then turning on the screensaver.

---

For checking the lockscreen -
Install quartz -
pip install pyobjc-framework-Quartz

Much simple code -

import Quartz
d = Quartz.CGSessionCopyCurrentDictionary()
print('CGSSessionScreenIsLocked' in d.keys())