Question - How do I create UI elements based on AXNotifications

[avnerbarr]

I realize the question is a bit vague, but the Apple documentation is horrendous and hoping you could assist.

Basically, imagine a scenario where you are assisting in spell checking (or some other text manipulation of the given keystrokes in a text element).

I want to listen for events on the text element, run some text processing, and present a popup dialogue that the user can interact with.
Once the user selects (or escapes) out of the dialogue I should be able to replace the typed text

I've gone through the "actions", "attributes" and various other documentation I could find but see nothing about how to create elements.

You can see this type of interaction in apps like Grammarly and Fig etc.

I can't seem to find ANY code at all with examples for this 🤔

No Apple documentation seems to exist as well...

[lukasmwerner]

Hey were you able to get anywhere with this @avnerbarr ?

[avnerbarr]

no

…

On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 6:51 AM Lukas Werner ***@***.***> wrote: *lukasmwerner* left a comment (tmandry/AXSwift#40) <#40 (comment)> Hey were you able to get anywhere with this @avnerbarr <https://github.com/avnerbarr> ? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#40 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AASLDO6G3YKCOMHF4GQX36L3LA6K3AVCNFSM6AAAAACCVVNJLWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZTCMZUG43DOOBYGU> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[soundflix]

The following is AFAIK the way to go:

• You can’t create UI elements in another application.
• AX will help you to get notified if the wanted element is focused, get its position and its contents.
• the popup with user interaction is in your app, even though you try to make it look like an extension of the target app.
• You will need to „paste“ your result with other ways than AX, maybe NSEvent.