Silently fails under Linux if xwininfo/xprop is missing about active-win

[binyamin]

@sindresorhus I can confirm that, on Wayland, this is impossible by design. It's a security measure, meant to prevent windows from spying on each other. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4546501

PR incoming 😃

@tkainrad According to this StackExchange answer, Gnome 41 doesn't allow that workaround anymore.

[sindresorhus]

I don’t use or have Linux, but a PR is welcome to improve the behavior.

[tkainrad]

The ActivityWatch project has a similar problem with Wayland: ActivityWatch/activitywatch#92

So far, they seem to have found a workaround for Gnome.

This shell command can retrieve the active Window application name for Wayland + Gnome:

gdbus call -e -d org.gnome.Shell -o /org/gnome/Shell -m org.gnome.Shell.Eval global.get_window_actors\(\)[`gdbus call -e -d org.gnome.Shell -o /org/gnome/Shell -m org.gnome.Shell.Eval global.get_window_actors\(\).findIndex\(a\=\>a.meta_window.has_focus\(\)===true\) | cut -d"'" -f 2`].get_meta_window\(\).get_wm_class\(\) | cut -d'"' -f 2

If there are no other options, this might be an approach to support a large portion of Wayland users.

[accerqueira]

Although Wayland doesn't support EWMH/ICCCM by design, Wayland compositors may provide equivalent functionality, like wlr-foreign-toplevel-management.
This might inspire a future PR: https://github.com/activitywatch/aw-watcher-window-wayland