How to get the current active window in Ubuntu 22.04?

Question

I need to be able to get the current active Window's app name and page title in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (with Wayland desktop), no matter what the app is. I'll be implementing it in python, so something friendly to that environment would be wonderful!

The ways that work for me in previous versions of Ubuntu don't seem to work properly in 22.04. The ways that work in other Linux distros also don't seem to work in 22.04.

1. I've tried the following:

   xprop -root _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW
   

   This gives me great information for Chromium, Firefox, Opera and Brave, but nothing else (not Terminal, System Monitor, Calculator, LibreOffice Writer, etc). Instead, for non-web-browsers, it seems to just return 0.

2. I've tried the gdbus call here in python:

   #!/usr/bin/env python3
   import subprocess
   if name == "main":
       while 1 == 1:
       print('---------------')
       print('global.get_window_actors...')
       app_command = ("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\(\)")
       app_process = subprocess.Popen(app_command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
       app_retval = app_process.stdout.read()
       app_retcode = app_process.wait()
       actorsApp = app_retval.decode('utf-8').strip()
       print(actorsApp)
   
       time.sleep(1)
   
   

   This just consistently returns (false, ''), no matter what app is active.

3. I've tried Wnck, which returns this error:

   Wnck-WARNING **: libwnck is designed to work in X11 only, no valid display found
   

4. I tried combining these:

    xdpyinfo | grep focus
    xwininfo -root -tree
   

   But just like _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW, these gave me accurate info for web browsers in focus, but not other apps.

5. Looking at wmctrl -lx I see the same thing yet again, only web browsers are listed when open, not any other open apps.

6. The closest to success I've come is using pyatspi to track accessibility events. I had to specially turn on GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY in my ~/.profile file to get Firefox to work with it.

   But once I had it up and running it seems to track everything properly as long as the windows I want tracked are already open first. However, if I open a new app (consistently Chromium, but other apps usually do the same thing too), then pyatspi seems to freeze. If I could get pyatspi to work right, that would be a sufficient solution for me, but with it freezing every time an app is opened, it just won't do. Here is my pyatspi code.

    #!/usr/bin/env python3
   import pyatspi
    from datetime import datetime, timedelta
   class PyatspiMonitor:
        app = ''
        title = ''
        focusMoment = None
        eventPrint = ''
    def getApplicationTitle(self, appName):
        print('getApplicationTitle() ' + str(datetime.now()))
        title = None
        try:
            if appName:
                i = 0
                desktopCount = pyatspi.Registry.getDesktopCount()
                while i < desktopCount:
                    try:
                        desktop = pyatspi.Registry.getDesktop(i)
                        for application in desktop:
                            # While we do nothing with the attr data, it seems important
                            # to grab it for pyatspi to see Chromium correctly
                            try:
                                attrs = str(node.getAttributes())
                            except:
                                attrs = ''
                            if application and application.name and application.name.lower() == appName.lower():
                                for node in application:
                                    title = node.name
                                    break
                            if title:
                                break
                        desktop.setCacheMask(pyatspi.cache.NONE)
                        if title:
                            break
                    except:
                        pass
                    i = i + 1
        except Exception as e:
            print("getApplicationTitle() ERROR: " + str(e))
            title = None
        return title
   
    def onEvent(self, e):
        try:
            if self.app:
                appname = ""
                title = ''
                try:
                    appname = str(e.host_application.name)
                except:
                    appname = ""
                # Make sure we don't override a valuable onFocus
                # event with stuff that's less valuable
                oneSecondAgo = datetime.now() - timedelta(seconds=1)
                if (self.focusMoment and self.focusMoment < oneSecondAgo) or (not self.focusMoment):
                    if appname and appname.lower() == self.app.lower():
                        # This event is from the focused app
                        try:
                            title = str(e.source_name)
                        except:
                            title = ''
                    if not title:
                        # See if there's a meaningful change to the title of the active app
                        # since its last onFocus event
                        title = self.getApplicationTitle(self.app)
                    if title:
                        self.focusMoment = datetime.now()
                        self.title = title
   
                        toPrint = 'onEvent() RESULT: ' + self.app + ' - ' + self.title
                        if self.eventPrint != toPrint:
                            self.eventPrint = toPrint
                            print(toPrint)
        except Exception as e:
            print("onEvent() ERROR: " + str(e))
            pass
   
    def onFocus(self, e):
        try:
            # detail1 = 1 means this app received focus.
            # detail1 = 0 means focus left this app.
            if e.detail1:
                appname = ""
                try:
                    appname = str(e.host_application.name)
                except:
                    appname = ""
                if appname and appname.lower() != 'gnome-shell':
                    self.focusMoment = datetime.now()
                    self.app = appname
                    try:
                        title = str(e.source_name)
                    except:
                        title = None
                    if not title:
                        title = self.getApplicationTitle(appname)
                    if not title:
                        title = self.app
                    self.title = title
                    print('onFocus() RESULT: ' + self.app + ' - ' + self.title)
        except Exception as e:
            print("onFocus() ERROR: " + str(e))
            pass
   
    def startMonitoring(self):
        try:
            print('startMonitoring()')
            pyatspi.Registry.registerEventListener(self.onFocus, "object:state-changed:focused")
            pyatspi.Registry.registerEventListener(self.onFocus, "object:state-changed:active")
            pyatspi.Registry.registerEventListener(self.onEvent, "object")
            pyatspi.Registry.start()
        except Exception as e:
            print("startMonitoring() ERROR: " + str(e))
            pass
   
   
   if name == "main":
        pyatspiMonitor = PyatspiMonitor()
        pyatspiMonitor.startMonitoring()
   

So, again, my question is, how can I find out the app name and title of the currently active window in Ubuntu 22.04?

Thanks in advance!