Access media key events from Swift

MediaKeyTap

MediaKeyTap provides an API for accessing the Mac's media keys (play/pause, next and previous) in your Swift application.
MediaKeyTap will only capture key events when it is the most recently activated media application, matching the behaviour of
existing applications, such as those using SPMediaKeyTap.

MediaKeyTap builds its whitelist by combining the static whitelist from SPMediaKeyTap with a dynamic whitelist built
at runtime using NSDistributedNotificationCenter. If you create a new application using this library, you should not
need to add your bundle identifier to the whitelist.

Usage

Create a MediaKeyTap:

@NSApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
    ⋮

    var mediaKeyTap: MediaKeyTap?

    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(aNotification: Notification) {
        mediaKeyTap = MediaKeyTap(delegate: self)
        mediaKeyTap?.start()
    }

    ⋮
}

and implement MediaKeyTapDelegate's 1 method:

func handle(mediaKey: MediaKey, event: KeyEvent) {
    switch mediaKey {
    case .playPause:
        print("Play/pause pressed")
    case .previous, .rewind:
        print("Previous pressed")
    case .next, .fastForward:
        print("Next pressed")
    }
}

You can also access the KeyEvent to access the event's underlying keycode, keyFlags and keyRepeat values.

The MediaKeyTap initialiser allows the keypress behaviour to be specified:

    MediaKeyTap(delegate: self, on: .keyDown) // Default
    MediaKeyTap(delegate: self, on: .keyUp)
    MediaKeyTap(delegate: self, on: .keyDownAndUp)

Requirements

  • In order to capture key events globally, your application cannot be sandboxed or you will not receive any events.

Installation

CocoaPods

Add pod 'MediaKeyTap' to your Podfile and run pod install.

Then import MediaKeyTap.

Carthage

Add github "nhurden/MediaKeyTap" to your Cartfile and run carthage update.

GitHub

https://github.com/nhurden/MediaKeyTap