winapi - detecting idle time using python

Question

How do I detect if the system is idle on Windows using Python (i.e. no keyboard or mouse activity). This has already been asked before, but there doesn't seem to be a GetLastInputInfo in the pywin32 module.

Answer 1

from ctypes import Structure, windll, c_uint, sizeof, byref

class LASTINPUTINFO(Structure):
    _fields_ = [
        ('cbSize', c_uint),
        ('dwTime', c_uint),
    ]

def get_idle_duration():
    lastInputInfo = LASTINPUTINFO()
    lastInputInfo.cbSize = sizeof(lastInputInfo)
    windll.user32.GetLastInputInfo(byref(lastInputInfo))
    millis = windll.kernel32.GetTickCount() - lastInputInfo.dwTime
    return millis / 1000.0

Call get_idle_duration() to get idle time in seconds.