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 safRunning to is_running("Safari")
if safRunning then
    tell application "Safari"
      -- Stuff I only want executed if Safari is running goes here.
    end tell
    return "Running"
else
    return "Not running"
end if

The problem: when I run this via the osascript command line utility, if Safari is not running, it gets launched and the script reports "Running". This is not the behaviour I desire or would expect. Note that it works as desired/expected when run within AppleScript Editor.

Is this an osascript bug / known issue? Or is it somehow intended behaviour for reasons I'm missing? Can anyone get it to work as desired? (BTW I'm running OSX 10.7.5; I can't see how to get osascript to report a version number).

If you comment out the tell / end tell lines, it behaves as I'd expect: if Safari is not running, it doesn't launch it, and prints "Not running". So it seems to me like the tell is what's causing Safari to be launched, but it doesn't need to be actually executed, just present in the script...? For a while I wondered if maybe this was just how tell is supposed to work, but since it doesn't work like this in AppleScript Editor, I guess not...

In fact, here's another, madder, version with similar behaviour:

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

set safRunning to is_running("Safari")
return safRunning
if false then
    tell application "Safari"
    end tell
end if

This still always launches Safari, even though tell is inside an if false block after the return statement! (But again, this is fine in AppleScript Editor.)

BTW, this behaviour isn't limited to Safari, but it also isn't universal:

• Affected apps include: Safari, TextEdit, iPhoto, AppleScript Editor, iTerm, ...
• Non-affected apps include: Google Chrome, iTunes, Preview, Mail, Terminal, Address Book, Echofon, ...

So, does anyone have any ideas about how I might fix or route around this? Is it an osascript bug? Or am I missing something about AppleScript's semantics?

For context: I'm trying to write a script (to be embedded/called from some python) which queries open browsers for the URLs of any tabs they have open; I've got it all working fine except that it always launches Safari, whether it's open or not. I've boiled down that undesirable behaviour to the simple test case shown above. I'm not aware of any way to run this script from python without using osascript, other than appscript, which I don't want to use because it's no longer developed/supported/recommended.

Many thanks for all inputs / insights!

Microphone

Answer 1

I suspect the reason you are getting this is because each time you call the script from the command line with osascript the script is being compiled.

The act of compiling on a tell application will afaik make the app launch.

Calling the script from the command line with osascript from a pre-compiled file i.e .scpt does not cause this behaviour because the is no compiling to be done.

But calling it from a plain text (.txt,.sh ) file will so the app will launch.

If you do not want to use a .scpt file and want to use a plain text file then you could try the trick of putting a run script command in the applescript.

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

set safRunning to is_running("Safari")
if safRunning then
    run script "tell application \"Safari\" 
    
open location \"http://google.com\"
     
    end tell"
    return "Running"
else
    return "Not running"
end if

The script in the run script is only compiled when needed. You will need to escape any characters like quotes as in my example.

It will be easier if you write the script in a normal applescript document first and compiled it to check for errors.

Then copy it to the plain text file.

---

UPDATE **

The method I used above was from a old script I had used to solved this issue a while before I answered here.

The answer works and is not trying to be elegant. ;-)

I actually like user1804762 method below. As it does work but feel the Answer is not clear enough so I will give an example on using it.

set appName to "Safari"

if application appName is running then
    
    tell application id (id of application appName)
        
        open location "http://google.com"
    end tell
    return "Running"
else
    return "Not running"
end if

This script can be run from the command line with osascript

example:

osascript /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/foo.scpt

Notice that the script is saved as a compiled script. This will work ok and you can also save and use it as a plain text script.

i.e.

osascript /Users/USERNAME/Desktop/foo.applescript

Dm

@nwinkler I am not sure why you are telling me this? – Dm

@Dm Not telling you specifically, I left it as a general comment, since yours is the accepted answer and showing as the first answer. I wanted to make people aware that they should read on. – Graner

@Graner As you can see the voting mechanism works to show how useful an answer is. I think the reason that it was not accepted was because it goes in to detail with some code examples of "Enhanced Application Object Model" but shows now real clear relation to the question. Which is a shame because it will also work. And I only used an old code method I had to solve a similar issue I had some years before. – Dm

Caution: if application "app name" is running does not work if the user renamed the application! Ideally, the script should look not for the app by name but by its bundle id. Which doesn't appear work with the proposed method, but only by using "System Events", I'm afraid. – Baudin

Answer 2

Some Info:

"Enhanced Application Object Model":

tell application "iTunes"
    if it is running then
      pause
    end if
end tell

You can also do it that way:

if application "iTunes" is running then
    tell application "iTunes" to quit
end if

You can also do this:

get name of application "iTunes"
get version of application "iTunes"

And to complete the journey:

get id of application "TextEdit" --> "com.apple.TextEdit"
tell application id "com.apple.TextEdit"
    make new document
end tell

That was the "Enhanced Application Object Model". If an app still launches (for example, the first time you compile & execute the script) I assume it is because AS has to get some info from the app which it did not found in the dictionary (or something like that...?).

Quinton

That's all really interesting information but I don't see how it answers my question. But thanks! – Microphone

It's just the modern (2013) way to check for a running application without launching it (with exceptions as we know). – Quinton

It may not address the question entirely, but after Googling 'How to check in AppleScript if an app is running' and finding this post, I'm thankful this is one of the posted answers! – Jumbled

Caution: if application "name" is running does not work if the user renamed the application! – Baudin

@ThomasTempelmann thats expected behavior!. To avoid that you would use the application id in place of the name."com.apple.TextEdit" – Dm

This is the best answer. – Flesh

Answer 3

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.

---

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!

Tombouctou

And that is why i changed to Firefox – Calcicole

Answer 4

Some notes for 2023 (because I still don't have enough reputation to simply comment).

• Users renaming apps I am happy to ignore (their problem)
• NOT using the id of application "AppName" form causes a launch for me (so is not a solution to the OP)
• using tell System Events requires user approval these days, so best avoided

The following works for me (does not launch the app if it isn't running) in Monterey on 1 shell line:

osascript -e 'if application "AppName" is running then tell application id (id of application "AppName") to <do something>'

Ahithophel

This works real nicely. – Maser

Answer 5

tell application "Finder"
    set applicationsnames to get the name of every process whose visible is true
end tell

set appName to "Safari"

if applicationsnames does not contain appName then
    say (appName & " is not running")
    --add here what you want to happen

end if
return applicationsnames

This is returning {"Finder", "JavaAppLauncher", "firefox", "Microsoft Word", "iTunes", "AppleScript Editor"} for me

Hope this helps

Calcicole

Answer 6

All the previously made answers suffer from the same issue, though:

They look for the app by its name. However, the user may rename the app, and then the script will believe the app does not run, when in fact it does.

To properly check for a running app, it should be found by its bundle ID, which the user cannot change.

The bundle ID can be inquired with this command, for instance, when the app is already running:

tell application "System Events"
    get bundle identifier of application process "Safari"
end tell

Or like this for any installed app:

get id of application "Safari"

To check whether an app with a particular bundle ID is running, use this code:

tell application "System Events"
    set ids to bundle identifier of every application process
    if ids contains "com.apple.safari" then
        return "Running"
    else
        return "Not running"
    end if
end tell

Furthermore, here's an example to check if an app is running, then quit it, then relaunch it, ensuring that the very same app is relaunched that was running before, and not some other copy that may also exist:

set bundleID to "com.apple.safari"
set apps to runningApps(bundleID)
set appCount to length of apps
if appCount is not 0 then
    quit application id bundleID
    repeat while length of runningApps(bundleID) = appCount
        -- wait for the app to quit
    end repeat
    open first item of apps
end if

on runningApps(bundleID)
    -- The try block is to catch the rare case of having more than one
    -- copy of an app running at the same time. Unfortunately, in that
    -- case this code will not run as expected, because we don't get the
    -- correct list of multiple items back then. But at least the script
    -- will not crash from it but handle it gracefully.
    tell application "System Events"
        try
            return application file of (every application process whose bundle identifier = bundleID)
        end try
    end tell
    return {}
end runningApps

Baudin

A nice example I found while testing this: the app that is currently called "Messages" used to called "iChat". The bundle ID for "Messages" is indeed "com.apple.iChat" as in its original configuration. – Cookery

Answer 7

I had the same problem as described here trying to set up an AppleScript (triggered by a BetterTouchTool gesture) that plays/pauses VLC or iTunes, but only iTunes if VLC is not running (due to my workflow) and, naturally, only VLC while it's running. (I use the automatic pause/play trigger for iTunes in VLC's settings, for launch and quit of the app.)

VLC was always launched on the first use of the BetterTouchTool-trigger after every relaunch of BTT as the dictionary-cache is deleted at that point and the AppleScript handler has to launch every scripted application if a tell is aimed at it in order to call its dictionary.

I didn't find anything that avoided this anywhere; there were some attempts, but none worked for me as the dictionary-call by the script handler is nothing we can influence. I came up with this dirty workaround:

• Create a separate AppleScript file only containing the line that includes the tell for VLC
• Save it at some place where it won't annoy you
• Replace the line containing the tell in the original AppleScript with a line that runs that script

This will lead to the first compilation of the script not calling the application (VLC, in my case) directly, only the script, which means that the application will not need to launch.

VLC will need to launch once that separate file is called, but, well, if you call that file in order to tell VLC something, you will have VLC already opened (or will want it open) anyway.

The AppleScript I call through my BetterTouchTool-trigger (a specific tap on the trackpad, in my case) looks like this:

if application "iTunes" is running and not application "VLC" is running then
tell application "iTunes" to playpause

end if if application "VLC" is running then run script "/Users/jannis/bin/PlayVLC.scpt" end if

The separate AppleScript file ("PLayVLC.scpt, saved in a folder called "bin" in my user folder which I created manually ages ago for such purposes) is just this:

tell application "VLC" to play

If you open that script manually, it will of course also launch VLC. But that hopefully won't be necessary often, or ever.

I actually have no idea if this creates any deeper problems I don't know of as I'm not a pro coder; if so, please notify me. I hope this helps anyone!

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