Mac / Cocoa - Getting a list of windows using Accessibility API

I don't know a way to get window ID and PID from the Accessibility API.
The NSWindow method Laurent mentioned only provides Window IDs but not the PID of the window owning application.
I would use the CGWindowList methods that are available since 10.5.
To get a list of window IDs and the PID of the owner you can try the following:

CFArrayRef windowList = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly, kCGNullWindowID);
for (NSMutableDictionary* entry in (NSArray*)windowList) 
{
    NSString* ownerName = [entry objectForKey:(id)kCGWindowOwnerName];
    NSInteger ownerPID = [[entry objectForKey:(id)kCGWindowOwnerPID] integerValue];
    NSLog(@"%@:%d", ownerName, ownerPID);
}
CFRelease(windowList);  

You can control if you want all windows (including offscreen, ...) with the option paramter.
Also the entry objects contain a lot more information. Documentation link


Use AXUIElementCopyAttributeValues to copy the value for kAXWindowsAttribute, which should be an array of AXUIElement objects representing the application's windows.

As you can guess from its function name, it follows the copy rule.