Catch mouse move event from main process (Electron)

Question

I want to catch mouse move event from the main process (Not render) with Electron.
Now, I'm doing a setInterval loop to catch the mouse position, but this is not very clean (and from the render process)...

It's look like this:

setInterval(function () {
   let mousePos = SCREEN.getCursorScreenPoint()
}, 0)  

So... How can i catch the event from the main process ?
I want to know the position of the mouse, when the mouse is outside the window

Booster

What's the question? – Valentijn

How to catch mouse move event from the main process in Electron – Booster

Can you window.addEventListender('mousemove', callback)? – Peba

No because i want to know the position of the mouse, when the mouse is outside the window – Booster

Answer 1

You can get the mouse position from the main process exactly the same way as you would do in the renderer process, the only thing is you need to wait until the ready event of the app module is emitted.

So, for example:

// wait until ready event is fired
electron.app.on('ready', function() {

    // get the mouse position
    let mousePos = electron.screen.getCursorScreenPoint();
    console.log(mousePos);
});

https://electronjs.org/docs/api/screen#screengetcursorscreenpoint

Valentijn

Yes but i want to trigger a mouse move event (when CursorScreenPoint change) – Booster

There's no such event for this in Electron, you'll have to store the position every time and compare it to the previous value and then trigger your own function if it changed. – Valentijn

Answer 2

You can add a hook to the BrowserWindow to listen for the Windows WM_MOUSEMOVE message (in this case the message code is 0x200 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/inputdev/wm-mousemove).

browserWindow.hookWindowMessage(0x200, () => {
    // Your function here
})

Coray

Using Windows 7, this only works on dragging and in the right bottom corner it shows 1535x863 instead of 1920x1080 – Brewton

This only sporadically triggered. – Indeclinable