Hide mouse cursor on OS X after a few seconds

Question

For my fullscreen app, I want to hide the cursor after a few seconds if it's not moved, like the fullscreen mode in QuickTime or iTunes. Presumably I'm looking to call [NSCursor setHiddenUntilMouseMoves:YES], but how do I know when to call it?

Presumably I'm looking for the same as http://stackoverflow.com/questions/744980/hide-mouse-cursor-after-an-idle-time but on the Mac. I couldn't find a way to get similar a "idle time". (Plus, I probably don't care about keyboard events, just mouse movement.)

Answer 1

What about using NSTimer and check after n seconds whether nothing has happened?

Answer 2

You can get the time the cursor (and if you want also the keyboard) has been idle using: CGEventSourceSecondsSinceLastEventType(kCGEventSourceStateCombinedSessionState, kCGEventMouseMoved)

See also http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Carbon/Reference/QuartzEventServicesRef/Reference/reference.html. You're probably going to have to poll this function every couple of seconds, and you should assume the user moved the cursor if the time returned has decreased.