native-idle-time

Cross platform NodeJS addon to get user idle time.

native-idle-time queries the native windowing system (Windows, X, macOS) for the user's idle time, providing the number of milliseconds the user has been idle. The idle time is the same that is used to launch screensavers.

Install

npm install native-idle-time

Note

npm will try to install a binary version of the addon from Github. If a binary does not exist for your platform, npm will try to build the addon.
Installing in Linux may require libxss-dev and npm package nan. If you are trying to build the addon and it fails with the error message:

 ../native-idle-time_linux.cc:10:38: fatal error: X11/extensions/scrnsaver.h: No such file or directory

then install libxss-dev with the following:

sudo apt-get install libxss-dev

If you get the error:

Error: Cannot find module 'nan'

then use npm to install nan with:

npm install nan

Usage

const idleTime = require('native-idle-time')

setTimeout(() => {
  var millis = idleTime.getMillis()
  console.log(`User idle time: ${millis}ms`)
}, 1000)

API

native_idle_time.getMillis

Example: let millis = native_idle_time.getMillis()

Returns the time, in milliseconds, the system has gone without user input. If the addon cannot determine the time (no DISPLAY, ssh session, etc.), -1 is returned.

License

MIT