ScreenSaver Notification

[Blake Miller]

What do you do in your top level window to be notified that the screensaver has become active? I want to respond to this and temporarily disable a periodic event. Likewise, what notification is received once the screensaver has been deactivated and your window is now 'visible' again, even though your window might not be the one that is the 'active' window?

[David Crow]

How about SetWindowsHookEx(WH_FOREGROUNDIDLE, ...) or SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETSCREENSAVERRUNNING, ...)?

---

"Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown

[Blake Miller]

1. I could not see that the WH_FOREGROUNDIDLE would directly apply to the screensaver. I suppose if this event is detected, I could create a different timer to check the SystemParametersInfo every 30 seconds or so to see if the screensaver had become active. 2. This requires polling and is not a notification. I am looking for something sent to all 'top level windows' when the screensaver becomes active. I did find this one, WlxScreenSaverNotify, but I don't want to replace the GINA DLL.

[Flit]

I saw this article in the MSDN, hope it helps. HOWTO: Know When Your Screen Saver Starts ID: Q238882

[David Crow]

Blake Miller wrote: 1. I could not see that the WH_FOREGROUNDIDLE would directly apply to the screensaver. My bad. Blake Miller wrote: 2. This requires polling and is not a notification. I am looking for something sent to all 'top level windows' when the screensaver becomes active. When a screen saver starts, it posts a WM_SYSCOMMAND message to the foreground window with wParam equal to SC_SCREENSAVE.

---

"Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless." - Unknown

[Flit]

If you set a system wide hook for mouse and keyboard when you detect the screen saver has started you'll be able tell when the screen saver has stopped as it is mouse and keyboard activity that they respond to. Remember that for a system wide keyboard/mouse hook the hook functions need to be in a dll.

[Blake Miller]

:rolleyes: Now all I have to do is hope that EVERY possible application that has the foreground focus will post the SAME message to all other top level windows, and then we can all be notified when the screen saver starts. It still does not seem like a sure thing for every window...

[Blake Miller]

Thanks. I already hook the low level mouse handler, I can just add a low level keyboard hook to that same DLL.