objWatcher
This NVDA add-on watches changes to attributes of navigation objects.
Possible Use Cases
- Subtitles and Lyrics Watching:
Watch subtitle or lyric objects of certain players, enabling automatic reporting when they refresh.
- Chat Activity Watching:
Watch items of interest within group chat lists in messaging apps such as Unigram or WeChat. Automatically report new messages, even when working in the background.
- Testing and Debugging:
Watch the status bar of applications like Notepad to automatically report changes in rows and columns during editing.
Gestures
Watcher Layer Commands
Press NVDA+Alt+W to activate the watcher layer, where you can perform watching actions:
- Numeric Keys (0–9): Add the current navigator object to a specific position or report the status of an object already being watched at that position.
- Delete: Press once to remove the last watched object; press twice to remove all watched objects.
- T: Toggle the watch status of the current foreground window.
- P: Pause or resume all watching activities.
- Escape: Exit the watcher layer.
When entering the watcher layer, the add-on announces the current status:
- "No items are being watched. Please add items to watch."
- "Watching in progress. {n} items are being tracked."
- "Watching paused. {n} items in the watch list."
Other Gestures
The following actions are supported but have no default gestures assigned. Users can assign gestures to these actions via the Input Gestures dialog:
- Add current navigator object to watchlist.
- Note: This action can only be assigned to gestures where the main key is a numeric key (0–9) with a modifier, such as
NVDA+Alt+0–9.
- Toggle the watch status of the current window.
- Toggle pause/resume watching.
- Press once to delete the last watched object; press twice to delete all watched objects.
Settings
Access the settings panel from NVDA’s Preferences menu to configure the following options:
- Watcher Timer Interval: Set the watching interval in milliseconds (default is 100ms)
Contributors
Feel free to let me know the names of other localization contributors in any way you like.
Contribution
- Submit Pull Requests (PRs) for new features or localized translations via GitHub.
- Report bugs or provide feedback through the GitHub Issues page.
Release Notes
Version 1.0.4
- Compatible with NVDA2025.1
Version 1.0.3
- L10n updates from translation system.
Version 1.0.2
- Fixed document Markdown rendering issue.
Version 1.0.1
- Fixed duplicate objects being added
- Other improvements
Version 1.0.0
- Added watcher layer commands (
NVDA+Alt+W).
- Introduced watching feature for multiple objects.
- Introduced quick watching of the foreground window.
- Support pause/resume watching.
Version 0.4.5
Version 0.4.4
- Supported "speak on demand" mode for NVDA 2024.1.
- Localization updates.
Version 0.4.0
- Introduced a configurable timer interval for watching objects.