dotool - uinput tool

NAME  SYNOPSIS  DESCRIPTION  PERMISSION  KEYBOARD LAYOUTS  OPTIONS  ACTIONS  LONG-RUNNING INSTANCE  EXAMPLES  AUTHOR 

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NAME

dotool - uinput tool

SYNOPSIS

dotool < actions

DESCRIPTION

dotool reads actions from stdin and simulates keyboard/mouse input using Linux’s uinput module.

PERMISSION

dotool requires write permission to /dev/uinput, which is granted to users in group input by a udev rule.

You can test:

echo type hello | dotool

and if need be, you could add your user to group input with:

groupadd -f input
usermod -a -G input $USER

and then it’s foolproof to reboot to make the group and rule effective.

KEYBOARD LAYOUTS

dotool may type gobbledygook if it’s simulating keycodes for a different keyboard layout than your environment is expecting.

You can specify the layout with the environment variables DOTOOL_XKB_LAYOUT and DOTOOL_XKB_VARIANT. For example:

echo type azerty | DOTOOL_XKB_LAYOUT=fr dotool

You can also specify the name to give the virtual keyboard with the environment variable DOTOOL_KEYBOARD_NAME, which can be useful making rules for your environment.

Currently the type action has only heuristic support for dead keys.

OPTIONS

-h, --help

Print help and exit.

--list-keys

Print the possible Linux keys and exit.

--list-x-keys

Print the possible XKB keys and exit.

--version

Print the version and exit.

ACTIONS

key CHORD...
keydown CHORD...
keyup CHORD...

Press and/or release each CHORD. A CHORD is a key or a key with modifiers, such as a, shift+a or ctrl+shift+a.

The supported modifiers are super, altgr, ctrl, alt and shift.

Keys can be specified by Linux names, XKB names prefixed with x:, or Linux keycodes prefixed with k:. The Linux names are case-insensitive, except uppercase character keys also simulate shift. This example types !!! with the us layout:

echo key shift+1 x:exclam shift+k:2 | dotool

type TEXT

Type TEXT.

click left/middle/right
buttondown left/middle/right
buttonup left/middle/right

Press and/or release a mouse button.

wheel AMOUNT
hwheel AMOUNT

Scroll a vertical/horizontal mouse wheel by a positive or negative AMOUNT.

mouseto X Y

Jump the cursor to the position X Y, where X and Y are percentages between 0.0 and 1.0.

mousemove X Y

Move the cursor relative to its current position.

keydelay MILLISECONDS
keyhold MILLISECONDS
typedelay MILLISECONDS
typehold MILLISECONDS

Set the delay between/holding each key with the key* actions/type action.

The default keydelay and typedelay is 2ms, and the default keyhold and typehold is 8ms.

LONG-RUNNING INSTANCE

Each instance of dotool has an initial delay registering the virtual devices, but you can keep writing actions to a long-running instance. The daemon and client, dotoold and dotoolc, let you do this with a pipe behind the scenes, for example:

dotoold &
echo type super | dotoolc
echo type speedy | dotoolc

EXAMPLES

This greets the world:

echo type hi | dotool

This screams for roughly three seconds:

{ echo keydown A; sleep 3; echo key H shift+1; } | dotool

AUTHOR

John Gebbie

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