I am trying to make a straightforward code where a variable = 0 if Instagram isn't running and = 1 if it is but I can't find a tool that can do this for me. I am relatively new to Python programming so most answers to similar questions that I've seen on this were confusing.
In short, is there a way to detect if an app/process such as Instagram is open on my computer?
check by process name, iterating on all processes
import psutil
def checkIfProcessRunning(processName):
'''
Check if there is any running process that contains the given name processName.
'''
#Iterate over the all the running process
for proc in psutil.process_iter():
try:
# Check if process name contains the given name string.
if processName.lower() in proc.name().lower():
return True
except (psutil.NoSuchProcess, psutil.AccessDenied, psutil.ZombieProcess):
pass
return False;
More intersting examples can be found here
lower_case_with_underscores style.Processes on UNIX based systems create a lock file to notify that a program is running, so os.stat(location_of_file) can be checked. If the file exists, the program is running, otherwise not.
Other than this, psutil works really fine in these kind of problems.
import psutil
b = psutils.pid_exists(pid)
if b:
print ('Running')
This can be further checked at http://psutil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#psutil.pid_exists
for p in psutil.process_iter(attrs=['pid', 'name']):
if "instagram.exe" in (p.info['name']).lower():
print ('Running')
On Windows, FindWindow can also be used.
import win32ui
if FindWindow ("Instagram", "Instagram"):
print ('Running')
