nsIIdleService

You can get the idle time directly, but in most cases you will want to register an observer for a predefined interval. The observer will get an 'idle' notification when the user is idle for that interval (or longer), and receive a 'back' (Gecko 3 to 15) or 'active' (Gecko 16+) notification when the user starts using their computer again. 

Currently nsIIdleService implementations exist for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (via XScreenSaver).

Implemented by: @mozilla.org/widget/idleservice;1. To create an instance, use:

var idleService = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/widget/idleservice;1"]
                  .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIIdleService);

Method overview

Attributes

Methods

addIdleObserver()

Add an observer to be notified when the user idles for some period of time, and when they get back from that.

• The subject of the notification the observer will get is always the nsIIdleService itself. When the user goes idle, the observer topic is 'idle' and when they get back, the observer topic is 'back' in Gecko 15 and earlier or 'active' in Gecko 16 and later. The data parameter for the notification contains the current user idle time in Gecko 15 and earlier or 0 in Gecko 16 and later.
• You can add the same observer twice.
• Most implementations need to poll the OS for idle info themselves, meaning your notifications could arrive with a delay up to the length of the polling interval in that implementation. Current implementations use a delay of 5 seconds.

void addIdleObserver(
  in nsIObserver observer,
  in unsigned long time
);

Parameters

observer

The nsIObserver to be notified.

time

The amount of time in seconds the user should be idle before the observer should be notified.

removeIdleObserver()

Remove an observer registered with addIdleObserver().

void removeIdleObserver(
  in nsIObserver observer,
  in unsigned long time
);

Parameters

observer

The nsIObserver to be removed.

time

The amount of time they were listening for.

Example

Example 1

var idleService = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/widget/idleservice;1"]
                  .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIIdleService)
setTimeout(function() { alert(idleService.idleTime) }, 1000)
// if you don't use the mouse or the keyboard after running this snippet,
// you'll see a number around 1000 alerted.

Example 2

var idleService = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/widget/idleservice;1"]
                  .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIIdleService)
var idleObserver = {
  observe: function(subject, topic, data) {
    alert("topic: " + topic + "\ndata: " + data);
  }
};
idleService.addIdleObserver(idleObserver, 60); // one minute
// ...
// Don't forget to remove the observer using removeIdleObserver!
idleService.removeIdleObserver(idleObserver, 60);

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