React on global hotkey in a Java program on Window

Question

A Java6 application sits in the system tray. It needs to be activated using a hotkey (e.g. Super-G or Ctrl-Shift-L etc) and do something (e.g. showing an input box).

How do I do that on:

• Windows (XP or Vista)
• OS/X
• Linux (Gnome or KDE)

Answer 1

It seems that this is not doable in a cross-platform fashion without using the native interfaces.

On Windows, you can use the free JIntellitype library.

Answer 2

I found this solution to work just great on windows. It does not require you to install any software like JIntelliType. Note that this is 32 bit dll and you can recompile for 64-bit JVM is do desire. All credits to original author of the blog.

Answer 3

For Linux (X11) there is JXGrabKey: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jxgrabkey/

There is also a tutorial for grabbing a global hotkey on Linux: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=864566

I didn't though find a solution for OS X yet.

To build something for all 3 platforms I'd suggest stripping down JIntellitype (it's Apache license) to it's global hotkey functionality and extending it with the OS X and X11 functionality...

Answer 4

If anyone wants to do the OSX or Linux versions of the JNI part of Jintellitype I would be more than happy to add those to the JIntellitype library.

Melloware

http://www.melloware.com

Answer 5

I've compiled a library for global hotkeys in java using JNA. It currently supports Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. It also supports media keys on windows and linux.

if anyone is interested, try https://github.com/tulskiy/jkeymaster

I would appreciate any feedback.

Thank you.