Question

My goal is to have a program that sleeps in the background but can be activated by the user via some “hotkey”. From digging around the Xlib manual and the Xlib O’reilly manual, I gather that the correct way to to this is with XGrabKey. However my understanding of the process is incorrect as a simple proof of concept does not work.

My understanding is that if I call XGrabKey with the root window as the grab_window, and owner_events false, then whenever my hotkey is pressed the event will be sent only to the root window. If I then select KeyPress events from the root window, and then listen for X events, I should get a key press event when the hotkey is pressed. I’ve pasted a minimal example below.

What I expect is that when the program is run, regardless of what window has focus, if Ctrl+Shift+K is pressed, my program should output “Hot key pressed!” in the console, and then terminate.

Furthermore, it is my understanding that if the XGrabKey fails, the default error handler will display a message, and since it does not I am assuming that the call succeeds.

Obviously, my understanding is flawed somehow. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

#include <iostream>
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#include <X11/Xutil.h>


using namespace std;


int main()
{
    Display*    dpy     = XOpenDisplay(0);
    Window      root    = DefaultRootWindow(dpy);
    XEvent      ev;

    unsigned int    modifiers       = ControlMask | ShiftMask;
    int             keycode         = XKeysymToKeycode(dpy,XK_Y);
    Window          grab_window     =  root;
    Bool            owner_events    = False;
    int             pointer_mode    = GrabModeAsync;
    int             keyboard_mode   = GrabModeAsync;

    XGrabKey(dpy, keycode, modifiers, grab_window, owner_events, pointer_mode,
             keyboard_mode);

    XSelectInput(dpy, root, KeyPressMask );
    while(true)
    {
        bool shouldQuit = false;
        XNextEvent(dpy, &ev);
        switch(ev.type)
        {
            case KeyPress:
                cout << "Hot key pressed!" << endl;
                XUngrabKey(dpy,keycode,modifiers,grab_window);
                shouldQuit = true;

            default:
                break;
        }

        if(shouldQuit)
            break;
    }

    XCloseDisplay(dpy);
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Your program works here. My guess is you have another modifier active, such as NumLock. GrabKey only works on the exact modifier mask.

For example here is some (GPL) code from metacity window manager

/* Grab/ungrab, ignoring all annoying modifiers like NumLock etc. */
static void
meta_change_keygrab (MetaDisplay *display,
                     Window       xwindow,
                     gboolean     grab,
                     int          keysym,
                     unsigned int keycode,
                     int          modmask)
{
  unsigned int ignored_mask;

  /* Grab keycode/modmask, together with
   * all combinations of ignored modifiers.
   * X provides no better way to do this.
   */

  meta_topic (META_DEBUG_KEYBINDINGS,
              "%s keybinding %s keycode %d mask 0x%x on 0x%lx\n",
              grab ? "Grabbing" : "Ungrabbing",
              keysym_name (keysym), keycode,
              modmask, xwindow);

  /* efficiency, avoid so many XSync() */
  meta_error_trap_push (display);

  ignored_mask = 0;
  while (ignored_mask <= display->ignored_modifier_mask)
    {
      if (ignored_mask & ~(display->ignored_modifier_mask))
        {
          /* Not a combination of ignored modifiers
           * (it contains some non-ignored modifiers)
           */
          ++ignored_mask;
          continue;
        }

      if (meta_is_debugging ())
        meta_error_trap_push_with_return (display);
      if (grab)
        XGrabKey (display->xdisplay, keycode,
                  modmask | ignored_mask,
                  xwindow,
                  True,
                  GrabModeAsync, GrabModeSync);
      else
        XUngrabKey (display->xdisplay, keycode,
                    modmask | ignored_mask,
                    xwindow);

      if (meta_is_debugging ())
        {
          int result;

          result = meta_error_trap_pop_with_return (display, FALSE);

          if (grab && result != Success)
            {      
              if (result == BadAccess)
                meta_warning (_("Some other program is already using the key %s with modifiers %x as a binding\n"), keysym_name (keysym), modmask | ignored_mask);
              else
                meta_topic (META_DEBUG_KEYBINDINGS,
                            "Failed to grab key %s with modifiers %x\n",
                            keysym_name (keysym), modmask | ignored_mask);
            }
        }

      ++ignored_mask;
    }

  meta_error_trap_pop (display, FALSE);
}