How to detect if a process is running using Python on Win and MAC

Question

I am trying to find out a way to detect if a process is running in Windows Task Manager for Windows OS and Macintosh Activity Monitor for MAC OS using Python

Can someone please help me out with the code please?

Answer 1

psutil is a cross-platform library that retrieves information about running processes and system utilization.

import psutil

pythons_psutil = []
for p in psutil.process_iter():
    try:
        if p.name() == 'python.exe':
            pythons_psutil.append(p)
    except psutil.Error:
        pass

>>> pythons_psutil
[<psutil.Process(pid=16988, name='python.exe') at 25793424>]

>>> print(*sorted(pythons_psutil[0].as_dict()), sep='\n')
cmdline
connections
cpu_affinity
cpu_percent
cpu_times
create_time
cwd
exe
io_counters
ionice
memory_info
memory_info_ex
memory_maps
memory_percent
name
nice
num_ctx_switches
num_handles
num_threads
open_files
pid
ppid
status
threads
username

>>> pythons_psutil[0].memory_info()
pmem(rss=12304384, vms=8912896)

---

In a stock Windows Python you can use subprocess and csv to parse the output of tasklist.exe :

import subprocess
import csv

p_tasklist = subprocess.Popen('tasklist.exe /fo csv',
                              stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                              universal_newlines=True)

pythons_tasklist = []
for p in csv.DictReader(p_tasklist.stdout):
    if p['Image Name'] == 'python.exe':
        pythons_tasklist.append(p)

>>> print(*sorted(pythons_tasklist[0]), sep='\n')
Image Name
Mem Usage
PID
Session Name
Session#

>>> pythons_tasklist[0]['Mem Usage']
'11,876 K'

Answer 2

Here's a spin off of eryksun's Windows specific solution (using only built-in python modules) dropping the csv import and directly filtering tasklist output for an exe name:

import subprocess

def isWindowsProcessRunning( exeName ):                    
    process = subprocess.Popen( 
        'tasklist.exe /FO CSV /FI "IMAGENAME eq %s"' % exeName,
        stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
        universal_newlines=True )
    out, err = process.communicate()    
    try   : return out.split("\n")[1].startswith('"%s"' % exeName)
    except: return False