How to Get the Topmost Window Title using Qt/C++ (for Windows)

In this article I am going to describe how to get the title of the window which has the focus, or in other word is currently active. To be able to achieve this in Qt/C++ you need to use the operating system API functions, in this case Win32 API.

As a starting point you need to add ActiveQt module to your Qt project. To do this add the following line to your Qt *.PRO (qmke project) file:

QT += axcontainer

Next, add the following to your include files:

#include "UIAutomation.h"

---

---

Then use the following codes in a function to get the window title of the current active window:

IUIAutomation* uiauto;

CoInitialize(NULL);
HRESULT hr =
	CoCreateInstance(__uuidof(CUIAutomation),
		NULL,
		CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,
		__uuidof(IUIAutomation),
		(void**)& uiauto);

HWND topWindow = GetForegroundWindow();

if (topWindow == NULL)
	return;

IUIAutomationElement * windElem;
hr = uiauto->ElementFromHandle(topWindow, &windElem);
if (FAILED(hr))
{
	qDebug() << "Can't access the Window in focus!";
	return;
}

BSTR bWinName;
hr = windElem->get_CurrentName(&bWinName);
if (FAILED(hr))
	return;

QString windowName = QString::fromStdWString(
	std::wstring(
		bWinName, SysStringLen(bWinName)
	)
);
SysFreeString(bWinName);

qDebug() << windowName;
if (uiauto != NULL)
	uiauto->Release();

CoUninitialize();

---

---