I was referring to a non-platform specific solution. You can get a Swing Canvas window handle with 100% java on Windows (but, it is a "unsupported" hack). public static long getHandle(final Canvas c) { try { final Class<?> cl = Class.forName("sun.awt.windows.WComponentPeer"); java.lang.reflect.Field f = cl.getDeclaredField("hwnd"); f.setAccessible(true); return f.getLong(c.getPeer()); } catch (Exception e) { LOG.error("Caught Exception [" + e.getMessage() + "]"); } return -1; } Also, sorry I forgot the -wid option does work with X11. I was thinking about when I was trying to get it to work under OS X (macosx vo is not supported). My bad -- Alexander Sherwin alex.sherwin at gmail.com