Question

I have a simple script for programmatically launching an iOS project through XCode:

on run project_loc
  tell application "Xcode"
    open project_loc
    activate
  end tell

  tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Xcode"
      click menu item "Run" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Product" of menu bar 1
    end tell
  end tell
end run 

This works well, except that it switches focus to Xcode, which isn’t ideal because I’m trying to use this as part of a scheme that automatically recompiles and relaunches in response to any change in relevant files. Is there any way to accomplish this without giving focus to the Xcode window?

Answer 1

You cannot use GUI Scripting to click a menu item without switching to the application any more than you can click it yourself without doing so – the menu bar of an application is only available when it has focus (or, at least, was the last app to have focus – it doesn’t necessarily need a focused window). However, you can alleviate the disruptiveness of the switch by switching back to your previously focused app inside your script:

on run
    tell application "System Events" to set focusedAppID to bundle identifier of first application process whose frontmost is true
    <your code here>
    tell application id focusedAppID to activate
end run

But … Xcode itself is a scriptable application. If all you need is for the project to build, why not use

tell application "Xcode" to build <target / project>

which will spare you the can of worms GUI Scripting is – have a look at the Xcode AppleScript dictionary (not added by default – just drag Xcode.app to the library window in AppleScript editor).