OSX Lion AppleScript : How to get current space # from mission control?

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to get the current space # from mission control. Source would be helpful, but more helpful would be info on how to figure this out myself. I've written a few applescripts, but more often than not it seems like any time I need to do something new (that I can't find dictionary documentation for) it falls under the category of "tell this specific app (e.g. "System Events") this very specific thing" and I've no clue how I would actually figure that out.

---

Specifically what I am trying to do:

I hate the new mission control in OSX 10.7. I want my spaces "grid" back since I used it all the time. I used to navigate between spaces using arrow keys (e.g. ALT+↑) every few seconds. Now I'm stuck with this clunky 1x9 array of spaces instead of an elegant 3x3 grid. I've re-mapped all my spaces to use the number pad, which partially takes care of the problem (since it is a 3x3 grid), but only when I have an external keyboard attached.

Basically, I want to be able to use ALT+↑ and ↓ again, but to do so I need to detect the current space # so that I can switch from space 5-->2, for example.

Dave's answer below, although far more detailed than I expected, requires writing an app to do this (plus it still doesn't fully answer the question). If it's at all possible, I'd rather just bind a few keys to an applescript.

Trapan

Answer 1

I'm trying to figure this out myself. Not there yet, but in the right direction:

• Each Mission Control "space" gets a uuid assigned to it...
• ...except for the very first one (AFAIK), and the Dashboard one.

You can read them here:

$ defaults read com.apple.spaces
$ defaults read com.apple.desktop

File locations:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

Here's mine. I have four spaces enabled, and three entries show up:

$ defaults read com.apple.spaces
{
    spaces =     (
                {
            type = 0; 
            uuid = "9F552977-3DB0-43E5-8753-E45AC4C61973";
        },
                {
            type = 0;
            uuid = "44C8072A-7DC9-4E83-94DD-BDEAF333C924";
        },
                {
            type = 0;
            uuid = "6FADBDFE-4CE8-4FC9-B535-40D7CC3C4C58";
        }
    );
}

If you delete a space, that entry will get removed from the file. If you add a space, an entry will be added. Again, there's never an entry for Desktop 1 or Dashboard.

I'm not sure if there's a public API to figure out what space uuid is being displayed on a display. I'd assume that no uuid means Display 1, and the others' mean Display 1+n.

I took a quick glance through the AppleScript Editor Library (Window ---> Library) and didn't see any entries under System Events for spaces. This is probably something that can be done with Cocoa, perhaps via private API, but I'm not sure about AppleScript.

---

UPDATE - July 23, 2011

It looks like Dock controls Mission Control. You can grab its header files like so:

1. Go to: /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock
2. Right-Click and Show Package Contents
3. Navigate: /Contents/MacOS/
4. Copy and paste the Dock binary to your desktop.
5. Run: $class-dump ~/Desktop/Dock

That'll spit out all of its header files (it's long; almost 7,500 lines). You can see the spaceUUID strings appearing in there. There's a class called WVSpace which appears to represent a single Space in Mission Control, and a lot of other WV* classes.

I'll keep looking at it tomorrow; too tired now. :)

---

UPDATE - July 24, 2011

Inside Dock there's a class called WVSpaces. It has a number of attributes including:

WVSpace *currentSpace;
unsigned int currentWorkspace;
WVSpace *nextSpace;                     // Space on the right???
WVSpace *previousSpace;                 // Space on the left???
BOOL currentSpaceIsDashboard;
BOOL dashboardIsCurrent;
...lots more...

Each WVSpace class has an NSString *_uuid; attribute, which is likely its SpaceUUID. So theoretically you can get the current space number like so:

WVSpace *currentSpace = [[WVSpaces sharedInstance] currentSpace];
NSString *currentSpaceUUID = [currentSpace _uuid];     // Empty string if main space???

The trick is, how to get access to the private WVSpaces class buried inside of Dock? I'm assuming it's Singleton as it has an NSMutableArray *_spaces; attribute, probably with every space listed in it. Only one space gets displayed at a time (this holds true if you're using multiple monitors; the space spans across both of them), so it makes sense to only have one WVSpaces instance.

So it looks like it'll require some SIMBL hacking of Dock to gain access to WVSpaces.

Bingham

Thanks for the info. Any idea where the currently selected uuid may lie? I can't imagine it'd be in a plist. FYI, I just looked at this and they're definitely randomly generated uuids. They change if you remove a desktop# and then re-add it. What's your reason for digging into this? :) – Trapan

I added some more info I found. That's good to know the UUIDs are unique and non-persistent. I'm digging into this for a program I'm writing which is kinda secret for the time being. ;) – Bingham

FYI, all UUIDs in the Apple API will be randomly generated each time a UUID is generated/requested regardless of use. There will never be a UUID assigned "at the factory" because that might cause UUID collisions when two apps or devices communicate. The entire point of UUID is to uniquely identify a specific instances of a specific object. – Allanallana

Unfortunately no. There was a hacky way to extract it, but it broke in OSX 10.8. Pre-10.8, you'd register for @"NSWorkspaceActiveSpaceDidChangeNotification" notifications. After received, you'd iterate over all NSWindow's via CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(), and for each window read its value for @"kCGWindowWorkspace", which contained its workspace number. That was an optional key, so not all windows returned something, but you could "usually" get a list of all workspace ID's. But in 10.8, all windows return nil for its value, so it no longer works. – Bingham

Answer 2

I've been poking around, and I came up with this: https://gist.github.com/1129406

Spaces have a nonsequential ID and a sequential index (0-based). You can get the ID in two ways:

• from public APIs (see get_space_id)
• from the private CGS API CGSGetWorkspace

You can set the current space by index using public APIs (though the notifications themselves are not publicly documented): see set_space_by_index

You can set the current space by ID using private the CGS API CGSSetWorkspace.

You cannot get the current space index directly. However, if you're always using the same set of nine spaces, you can rotate through them once using set_space_by_index, collect their IDs, and build a mapping. Then you will be able to get the current index from the ID.

Jesusitajet

@cocoacoder - the APIs exist on Mountain Lion but don't do or return anything useful. – Mesomorph

Answer 3

... also been working on this :)

You say that you "need to to detect the current space #". This is not strictly true: To move down one row, you just move 3 spaces right, so in principle you could just bind something like

tell application "System Events" to tell process "WindowServer"
    key code {124, 124, 124} using control down
end tell

to Alt-down (with FastScripts, Alfred or some other fast method that avoids the overhead of Automator). This approach will fail if you ever hit down in the bottom row, of course -- but if you are truly hard-wired, you never do :)
You have to "Enable access for assistive devices" in the Universal Access preference pane for the key code approach to work.

Caveat: This doesn't work. When I launch the script above, I nicely jump three spaces. The problem is that afterwards my keyboard goes unresponsive: It seems that only the window manager is receiving events: I can close windows and switch space, but I cannot interact with any applications.
My theory is that this happens when the jump causes the current application to change during the execution of the script -- but I have no idea how to fix this.

A related observation: The Mission Control (i.e. /Applications/Mission Control.app/Contents/MacOS/Mission\ Control) seems to react to some command line arguments:

• Mission\ Control: show mission control
• Mission\ Control 1: show desktop
• Mission\ Control 2: show current application windows

I tried putting in some of the UUID's from defaults read com.apple.spaces, but that didn't do much. So much for fumbling in the dark.

Ornithomancy

Answer 4

I wrote an app - does it work for you?

Change Space.app

The keys to make it work are control-shift and the arrow keys, although this may be fixable if you are stuck on ALT.

Make sure you have 9 spaces (desktops) set up before you start, and you'll need to change the default ctrl-up and ctrl-down key bindings in System Preferences to something else (in Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Mission Control : Mission Control and Show Desktop).

On the first run it it will cycle through your desktops to enumerate them when you first change space.

Then you should be able to change between desktops like in a 3x3 grid.

There may be a few wrinkles, but it's basically functional, at least for me.

Kessinger

Very nice (I'm a user and fan of TotalSpaces) but I think the idea here was to do this programmatically, since it mentioned AppleScript. I remember TS has an API, but I don't recall if you can control it, or just pull info from the API (I record what's going on in each of my spaces, so if my machine crashes I can more easily arrange things as I had them pre-crash). Perhaps you could comment on that and give an example of how to do it. – Jedda

Also, there's hardly even a mention of the API on the TS site. Perhaps you could add documentation for it there? – Jedda

Answer 5

http://switchstep.com/ReSpaceApp

This works, is free (right now) and is awesome.

Just be sure to manually create as many spaces as your layout (in preferences) is expecting.

Rubadub

This is now TotalSpaces, and $18. It's worth it, though. Other than "Choosy", TotalSpaces is the only utility I practically can't live without. – Jedda

Answer 6

I'm on Mountain Lion and this seems to work for me.

defaults read com.apple.spaces

Look for "Current Space". You'll notice that running this command with different active spaces doesn't change the current space BUT if you check and uncheck a checkbox button in "System Preferences" and run it again, you'll see it updated.

Hopefully this helps someone else!

EDIT: It's ugly, but I'm using this:

killall Dock && sleep 0.2 && defaults read com.apple.spaces | grep -A1 "Current Space" | tail -1 | awk '{print $NF }' | cut -f1 -d';'

Complaisant

'if you check and uncheck a checkbox button in "System Preferences"' — could you elaborate? – Wryneck

Answer 7

on openNewSpace()
    tell application "System Events"
        —start mission control
        do shell script "/Applications/Mission\\ Control.app/Contents/MacOS/Mission\\ Control"
        tell process "Dock"
            set countSpaces to count buttons of list 1 of group 1
            --new space
            click button 1 of group 1
            --switch to new space
            repeat until (count buttons of list 1 of group 1) = (countSpaces + 1)
            end repeat
            click button (countSpaces + 1) of list 1 of group 1
        end tell
    end tell
end openNewSpace

Marni

Answer 8

I have come up with a workaround for this for myself in macOS Catalina, though I expect this should work for multiple macOS versions. This solution solves my problems, namely:

1. The inability to identify which desktop contains which project, because desktops cannot be named. (I usually am splitting time on work on multiple projects at once and each desktop is dedicated to work on a different project [and they all use the same apps])
2. The inability to programmatically(/easily) determine which desktop I'm on at any one time
3. The lack of tools to track time spent on each desktop

I solved item 1 quite some time back using Stickies.app. I put the project name in a huge enough font that it's easily legible in the desktop thumbnails in Mission Control and I hide the stickie window behind my Dock, assigned specifically to the corresponding project's desktop. (I also duplicate the desktop name in small superscripted text that pokes out from under the left side of the dock so that I can identify the current desktop outside of mission control.)

I just solved item 2 via applescript just now. In the stickie, I add a tiny, unobtrustive font string that identifies the stickie as the desktop name, e.g. 'dtop'. E.g. "small_superscripted_name LARGE_NAME tiny_dtop_string" or "project1 PROJECT1 dtop". Note, this script assumes that the project name contains no spaces (i.e. it's just one word). You can split on a different charcter/string, if you wish. Here is the applescript that, when run, results in the desktop name:

tell application "System Events"
    --obtain the stickie with the desktop name
    set dstr to name of first item of (windows of application process "Stickies" of application "System Events" whose name contains "dtop")

    --Parse the desktop name from the stickie
    set astid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "
    set dname to first item of (dstr's text items)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid

    --Show the result in a dialog window
     display dialog "Desktop: " & dname
end tell

And as far as item 3 goes, I have yet to implement it, but I could easily poll via a cron job by calling the script using osascript. However, I may explore the possibility of mapping the desktop keyboard shortcuts I use to trigger the script, say, after a delay like 1 second after a control-right/left-arrow, 10 seconds after F3 or control-up-arrow. (It wouldn't catch window-drags that trigger desktop changes, but that hasn't worked anyway since I started using 2 monitors.)

Once I have that set up, I'll likely output the desktop name and a timestamp to a log so I can track time spent on each desktop.

UPDATE: I did eventually solve item 3 with an Applescript run once a minute in a cron job. I also wrote a perl script to generate a bar plot of both: how much time spent on each project (i.e. desktop) over a period of time (e.g. the past week), and a per day plot showing how much time I spent on what projects each day. Here's an example:

Kenlee

I initially used Stickies on Mojave, but was frustrated by the fact that whenever I rebooted the system all the Stickies would reopen on the first Desktop and it became an onerous task to manually move all the Stickies to the appropriate Desktops. I was using 21 Desktop Workspaces so I really depended on the Stickies themselves to keep track of the different Desktops. Getting them all reassigned after a reboot was sometimes a process of elimination. Custom wallpaper images with text superimposed helped that process. – Chevet

hepcat72 -- Have you seen the app "CurrentKey Stats"? Unfortunately the author, Spencer Dailey, withdrew it when he could not support Ventura, but it does/did everything you describe, and more. Every Desktop has a name of up to 16 characters, hotkeys to switch to each desktop can be assigned, icons for each desktop appear in the Status Bar, statistics can be gathered per desktop per app, etc. Maybe you could take over Ventural support from Spencer... – Chevet

@Chevet - I usually have between 8-12 desktops. I have a script I wrote to restore windows to their original desktops, but I don't use it much. Too many drawbacks. You have to run it before and after a reboot so that it can record and then restore each window. And it's too slow. I can do it faster manually. I've been toying around with the idea of just running it on apps whose windows gather on the first desktop. Plus, you can't do anything else while it runs because it has to switch desktops while it records or restores. – Kenlee

I had not seen that app. Looks interesting. – Kenlee

Answer 9

To answer the actual question in the OP of how to get the space number (rather than address the issue of how to display and support a 3x3 grid of Spaces) and ignoring the limitation of using Lion:

I have been using a Gihub utility called WhichSpace on Mojave and Catalina. There have been no reports that I've seen of it not working on later versions as well, so I presume it does. https://github.com/gechr/WhichSpace

When running, it places a small numerical icon in the upper toolbar. It does a good job of updating that number reliably, no matter what kind of process causes the change of Desktop Workspace. It also does not seem to care about the psuedo-limit of 16 Desktops. I currently have 45 Desktops. The icon size might not allow acceptable results when the number is over 99, I have not tested it.

I access the number using AppleScript.

tell application ¬
    "System Events" to tell process ¬
    "WhichSpace" to set temp to (title of menu bar items of menu bar 1)
return item 1 of temp

I got the tip to the WhichSpace utility and the AppleScript snippet from the Keyboard Maestro Forum. https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/macros-desktop-spaces-macros-for-navigation-and-window-management-v1-1-superseded/21507/11

I hope this helps.

Chevet

Answer 10

Ok, here's an update as of 2024 and Sonoma:

#!/bin/bash

# Read the output of the defaults command
output=$(defaults read com.apple.spaces)
current_space_id=$(echo "$output" | awk '/"Current Space"/,/\}/' | grep 'ManagedSpaceID' | awk '{print $3}' | tr -d ';')
space_list=$(echo "$output" | awk '/Spaces =/,/\);/')
managed_space_ids=$(echo "$space_list" | awk '/ManagedSpaceID/')
# Find and print the line containing the current_space_id
line_number=$(echo "$managed_space_ids" | awk -v id="$current_space_id" '
BEGIN { RS=";"; FS="\n"; ORS=""; }
{
    if ($0 ~ "ManagedSpaceID = " id) {
        print NR;
    }
}')

echo "$line_number"

Tingly