UIElementInspector For Mac

UIElementInspector is provided for use by both Carbon and Cocoa applications, although this sample demonstrates their use from a Cocoa application.

In UIElementInspector, the Accessibility API is used to get information about whatever AXUIElements (widgets) are under the mouse at any given time.

Information may be obtained from the AXUIElement, and actions that it has may be performed.

As the mouse moves, the inspector window displays information obtained through the new API. When you then lock the inspector window on an element, you can dig deeper into the information provided by the API for that object, as well as trigger any actions that it might provide, in the interaction window.

UIElementInspector sample does not demonstrate how to make a custom UI element accessible so that the Accessibility API can access it. Custom Cocoa widgets will often just inherit the right behavior from their superclass.

Carbon applications will typically need to provide a little more code to serve up the right information to applications that are interested. Instead, this sample shows how to use the Accessibility API itself - to get information on other applications and UI elements on the screen, which you would need to do as an accessibility application.