Question

I have an application that, upon activation, is ‘backgrounded’ and has an NSStatusItem icon which can be clicked to either close the application or open an NSWindow.

Currently, I can click the icon, and then press command+option+T and the NSWindow will activate but what I can’t do is press the key combo without first clicking the NSStatusItem.

So, I was wondering if it’s possible at all to register a hot-key in the system or where do I need to be looking so that I don’t have to first click the status item to ‘activate’ the application?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yep! Implementing global hotkeys yourself is a bit tedious, but there are some really great wrappers out there. I’m quite partial to the one I wrote: http://github.com/davedelong/DDHotKey

You use it like this:

- (void) registerHotkey {
    DDHotKeyCenter * c = [[DDHotKeyCenter alloc] init];
    [c registerHotKeyWithKeyCode:9 modifierFlags:NSControlKeyMask target:self action:@selector(hotkeyWithEvent:) object:nil];
    [c release];
}

- (void) hotkeyWithEvent:(NSEvent *)hkEvent {
    NSLog(@"hotkey event: %@", hkEvent);
}