ReadMe

Goal for the Hotkey Manager app

• menubar app with hotkey to display an overlay

• overlay displays a hierarchical list next to a keyboard layout

• overlay is always on top of the screen

• UI is updated as items are received

• by default shows all hotkeys for the currently selected application

• allow for hotkey creation, changing, editing, and deleting

• allow for removing app hotkeys

• allow for hiding hotkeys from the overlay

• allow for highlighting hotkeys in the overlay

Additional features

• detect keyboard layout changes
• global hotkeys view for macOS hotkeys and menubar app hotkeys
• display error for duplicate hotkeys
• highlight hotkeys for currently pressed keys
• importing adobe hotkey configurations
• allow for adding representative dummy hotkeys to the overlay
• hotkey list includes menu separators if between hotkeys

Getting Started

For retrieving current hotkeys, entry point is ApplicationServices and AXUIElement AXChildren allows for traversing the menu hierarchy

Below is a snippet of the menu hierarchy for a Xcode MenuBar element

<AXApplication: “Xcode”>
 <AXMenuBar>
  <AXMenuBarItem: “Edit”>
   <AXMenu>
    <AXMenuItem: “Format”>
     <AXMenu>
      <AXMenuItem: “Text”>
       <AXMenu>
        <AXMenuItem: “Writing Direction”>
         <AXMenu>
          <AXMenuItem: “   Default”>

Attributes:
   AXIdentifier:  “makeBaseWritingDirectionNatural:”
   AXEnabled:  “0”
   AXFrame:  “x=833 y=514 w=124 h=22”
   AXParent:  “<AXMenu>”
   AXSize:  “w=124 h=22”
   AXMenuItemCmdGlyph:  “(null)”
   AXRole:  “AXMenuItem”
   AXMenuItemPrimaryUIElement:  “(null)”
   AXMenuItemCmdModifiers:  “8”
   AXPosition:  “x=833 y=514”
   AXTitle:  “   Default”
   AXHelp:  “(null)”
   AXMenuItemCmdChar:  “(null)”
   AXRoleDescription:  “menu item”
   AXSelected (W):  “0”
   AXMenuItemCmdVirtualKey:  “(null)”
   AXMenuItemMarkChar:  “✓”

Hotkey is stored either as localized string using AXMenuItemCmdChar or as keyCode using AXMenuItemCmdVirtualKey

Editing hotkeys is done through ~Library/Preferences/ .plist files for each app, so is editing native macOS hotkeys

Current Questions

1. Model Structure My current layout is as follows:

• Application

  • Children: MenuItem?

• MenuItem

  • Parent: Application
  • Parent: MenuItem?
  • Children: MenuItem?

This is only to the fact that I haven't been able to implement a model that represents a section while traversing the menu.

A better approach would be to have a model that represents a section and a model that represents a hotkey?

• Application

  • Children: Section?

• Section

  • Parent: Application
  • Parent: Section?
  • Children: Section?
  • Children: MenuItem?
  • Children: Hotkey?

• should "menuItem representing a section" be a separate model?

• should "hotkey menuItem" be a separate model?

2. How to handle mixed models in traversal while persisting item relationships

• this is mostly regarding MenuBarService and its traverseMenu method

3. How to handle CoreData?

• should I use MVVM?

• how to make sure relations are correctly persisted and retrieved?

• I guess I'll need to first fetch for existing entities before appending the items for display to make sure userSettings are not overwritten.

• Is AsyncStream for traversal still feasible?

Development Resources

MenuBar Traversal

ApplicationServices and AXUIElement https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applicationservices/axuielement_h

Useful App to inspect UIElement Attributes: https://github.com/fruitsamples/UIElementInspector

Requires Accessibility Permissions, as well as App Sandboxing disabled