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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T16:57:33+00:00

I am having difficulty getting the pid of a launched file in an application.

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I am having difficulty getting the pid of a launched file in an application. I think I’m nearly there but I keep getting a null:

[sharedWorkspace openFile:@"/Users/abs/Documents/my.txt" withApplication:@"TextEdit"]; 

 NSDictionary * currentAppInfo = [sharedWorkspace activeApplication];

 int pid = [[currentAppInfo objectForKey: @"NSApplicationProcessIdentifier"] intValue];

 NSLog(@"%@", pid); // (null), using @i, @u, @d I get 0

What am I doing wrong here?

This is for a commnand line application being built in xcode 4.2.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you’re doing your app as a command line application, you are likely not even using AppKit. Is the AppKit.framework linked in your project?

    Does the [NSWorkspace openFile: withApplication:] call even work?

    Check out this CocoaBuilder thread. One quote that stands out to me is:

    AppKit in general requires a window server connection.

    To get the process id (pid) of the TextEdit you launched, I believe you’re going to have to try something else.

    Of course you realize that [NSWorkspace activeApplication] has been deprecated as of 10.7, yes?

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