SendKeys

SendKeys is a macOS command line application used to automate the keystrokes and mouse events.

It is a great tool for automating input and mouse events for screen recordings.

This is a Swift rewrite of sendkeys-macos.

Usage

Basic usage:

sendkeys --application-name "Notes" --characters "Hello<p:1> world<c:left:option,shift><c:i:command>"

Activates the Notes application (assuming Notes is already running) and types Hello (followed by a 1 second pause) and world, and then selects the word world and changes the font to italics with command + i.

Input can be read from a file:

sendkeys --application-name "Code" --input-file example.txt

Activates Visual Studio Code and sends keystrokes loaded from example.txt.

Input can also be piped to stdin:

cat example.txt | sendkeys --application-name "Notes"

Activates the Notes application and sends keystrokes piped from stdout of the preceding command.

Arguments

• --application-name <application-name>: The application name to activate or target when sending commands. Note that a list of applications that can be used in --application-name can be found using the apps sub command.
• --pid <process-id>: The process id of the application to target when sending commands. Note that this if this argument is supplied with --application-name, --pid takes precedence.
• --targeted: If supplied, the application keystrokes will only be sent to the targeted application.
• --no-activate: If supplied, the specified application will not be activated before sending commands.
• --input-file <file-name>: The path to a file containing the commands to send to the application.
• --characters <characters>: The characters to send to the application. Note that this argument is ignored if --input-file is supplied.
• --delay <delay>: The delay between keystrokes and instructions. Defaults to 0.1 seconds.
• --initial-delay <initial-delay>: The initial delay before sending the first keystroke or instruction. Defaults to 1 second.
• --animation-interval <interval-in-seconds>: The time between mouse movements when animating mouse commands. Lower values results in smoother animations. Defaults to 0.01 seconds.

Installation

Homebrew (recommended)

Install using homebrew:

brew install socsieng/tap/sendkeys

Manual installation

Alternatively, install from source:

git clone https://github.com/socsieng/sendkeys.git
cd sendkeys
make install

Markup

Most printable characters will be sent as keystrokes to the active application. Support for additional instructions is provided by some basic markup which is unlikely to be used in other markup languages to avoid conflicts.

Key codes and modifier keys

Support for special key codes and modifier keys is provided with the following markup structure: <c:key[:modifiers]>

• key can include any printable character or, one of the following key names: f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, f9, f10, f11, f12, esc, return, enter, delete, space, tab, up, down, left, right, home, end, pgup, and pgdown. See list of mapped keys for a full list.
• modifiers is an optional list of comma separated values that can include command, shift, control, and option.

Example key combinations:

• tab: <c:tab>
• command + a: <c:a:command>
• option + shift + left arrow: <c:left:option,shift>

Key down and up

Some applications expect modifier keys to be pressed explicitly before invoking actions like mouse click. An example of this is Pixelmator which expect the option key to be pressed before executing the alternate click action. This can be achieved with key down <kd:key[:modifiers]> and key up <ku:key[:modifiers]>.

Note that these command shoulds only be used in these special cases when the mouse action and modifier keys are not supported natively.

An example of how to trigger alternate click behavior in Pixelmator as described above: <kd:option><m:left:option><ku:option>.

Mouse commands

Move mouse cursor

The mouse cursor can be moved using the following markup: <m:[x1,y1,]x2,y2[:duration][:modifiers]>

• x1 and y1 are optional x and y coordinates to move the mouse from. Defaults to the current mouse position.
• x2 and y2 are x and y coordinates to move the mouse to. These values are required.
• duration is optional and determines the number of seconds (supports partial seconds) that should be used to move the mouse cursor (larger number means slower movement). Defaults to 0.
• modifiers is an optional list of comma separated values that can include command, shift, control, and option.

Example usage:

• <m:400,400:0.5>: Move mouse cursor from current position to 400, 400 over 0.5 seconds.
• <m:400,400,0,0:2>: Move mouse cursor from 400, 400 position to 0, 0 over 2 seconds.
• <m:400,400>: Move mouse cursor to 400, 400 instantly.

Sample command: sendkeys -c "<m:100,300,300,300:0.5><p:0.5><m:100,300:0.5>"

Mouse click

A mouse click can be activated using the following markup: <m:button[:modifiers][:clicks]>

• button is required and refers to the mouse button to click. Supported values include left, center, and right.
• modifiers is an optional list of comma separated values that can include command, shift, control, and option.
• clicks is optional and specifies the number of times the button should be clicked. Defaults to 1.

Example usage:

• <m:right>: Right mouse click at the current mouse location.
• <m:left:2>: Double click the left button at the current mouse location.

Mouse drag

A mouse drag be initiated with: <d:[x1,y1,]x2,y2[:duration][:button[:modifiers]]>

The argument structure is similar to moving the mouse cursor.

• x1 and y1 are optional x and y coordinates to start the drage. Defaults to the current mouse position.
• x2 and y2 are x and y coordinates to end the drag. These values are required.
• duration is optional and determines the number of seconds (supports partial seconds) that should be used to drag the mouse (larger number means slower movement). Defaults to 0.
• button is optional and refers to the mouse button to use when initiating the mouse drag. Supported values include left, center, and right. Defaults to left.
• modifiers is an optional list of comma separated values that can include command, shift, control, and option. Note that modifiers can only be used if button is explicitly set.

Example usage:

• <d:400,400:0.5>: Drag the mouse using the left mouse button from current position to 400, 400 over 0.5 seconds.
• <d:400,400,0,0:2:right>: Drag the mouse using the right mouse button from 400, 400 position to 0, 0 over 2 seconds.
• <d:400,400:2:left:shift>: Drag the mouse using the left mouse button to 400, 400 over 2 seconds with the shift key down.

Mouse scrolling

A mouse scroll can be initiated with: <s:x,y[:duration][:modifiers]>

• x is required and controls horizontal scrolling. Positive values scroll to the right, while negative values scroll to the left.
• y is required and controls vertical scrolling. Positive values scroll down, while negative values scroll up.
• duration is optional and determines the number of seconds (supports partial seconds) that should be used to drag the mouse (larger number means slower movement). Defaults to 0.
• modifiers is an optional list of comma separated values that can include command, shift, control, and option.

Example usage:

• <s:0,400:0.5>: Scrolls down 400 pixels over 0.5 seconds.
• <s:0,-100:0.2>: Scrolls up 400 pixels over 0.2 seconds.
• <s:100,0>: Scrolls 100 pixel to the right instantly.

Mouse focus

The mouse focus command can be used to draw attention to an area of the screen by moving the cursor in a circular pattern. The mouse focus command uses the following markup: <mf:centerX,centerY:radiusX[,radiusY]:angleFrom,angleTo:duration>

• centerX is required and represents the center x coordinate of the circular path.
• centerY is required and represents the center y coordinate of the circular path.
• radiusX is required and represents the size of the radius along the x axis of the circular path.
• radiusY is optional and represents the size of the radius along the y axis of the circular path. If omitted, radiusX will be used indicating that the circular path will be a regular circle. An elipse can be achieved by having different values for radiusX and radiusY.
• angleFrom is required and represents the start angle/position of the circular path. Angle is defined using degrees where 0 represents 12 o'clock on an analog clock, and positive are applied in a clockwize direction. (e.g. 90 degrees is 3 o'clock).
• angleTo is required and represents the end angle/position of the circular path.
• duration is required and determines the number of seconds (supports partial seconds) used to complete the animation between angleFrom to angleTo.

Example usage:

• <mf:1000,200:50,20:180,900:2>: Draws attention to position 1000, 200 by moving the mouse along an eliptical 50 pixels wide by 20 pixels high starting at the bottom (180 degrees) to 900 degrees (delta of 720 degrees) over a period of 2 seconds.

Mouse path

The mouse path command can be used move the mouse cursor along a path. The mouse path command uses the following markup: <mpath:path[:ofssetX,offsetY[,scaleX[,scaleY]]]:duration>

• path is required and defines path for the mouse cursor to follow. The path is described using SVG Path data
• ofssetX and offsetY are optional and can be used to offset path coordinates by their respective x and y values. Defaults to 0,0.
• scaleX and scaleY are also optional and can be used to scale path coordinates by their respective x and y values. Defaults to 1,1. If scaleY is omitted while scaleX is provided, a uniform scale will be assumed. i.e. x = y.
• duration is required and determines the number of seconds (supports partial seconds) used to complete the animation along the path.

Example usage:

• <mpath:c0,40 200,40 200,0:2>: Moves the mouse from its current position along a cubic bezier path with control points 0,40 and 200,40 to the final position of 200,1.

Sample command: sendkeys -c "<mpath:M100,100 h 100 l5,30 10,-60 5,30 h 100:2><mpath:c0,40 -220,40 -220,0:1.5>"

Mouse down and up

Mouse down and up events can be used to manually initiate a drag event or multiple mouse move commands while the mouse button is down. This can be achieved with mouse down <md:button[:modifiers]> and mouse up <mu:button[:modifiers]>.

Note that the drag command is recommended for basic drag functionality..

An example of how include multiple mouse movements while the mouse button is down: <md:left><m:0,0,100,0:1><m:100,100:1><mu:left>.

Pauses

The default time between keystrokes and instructions is determined by the --delay/-d argument (default value is 0.1). Pauses can be customized with: <p:duration>

• duration is required and controls the amount of time to pause before the next keystroke/instruction is executed.

<P:seconds> (note upper case P) can be used to modify the default delay between subsequent keystrokes.

Continuation

A continuation can be used to ignore the next keystroke or instruction. This is useful to help with formatting a long sequence of character and inserting a new line for readability.

Insert a continuation using the character sequence <\>. The following instruction the sequence will be skipped over (including another continuation).

Transforming text for text editors

Some text editors like Visual Studio Code will automatically indent or insert closing brackets which can cause duplication of whitespace and characters. The transform subcommand can help transform text files for better compatibility with similar text editors.

Example:

sendkeys transform --input-file examples/node.js

You can also pipe the output of the transform command directly to your editor of choice. Example:

sendkeys transform --input-file examples/node.js | sendkeys --application-name "Code"

Retrieving mouse position

The mouse-position sub command can be used to help determine which mouse coordinates to use in your scripts.

For a one off read, move your mouse to the desired position, switch to your terminal app using command + tab and execute the following command:

sendkeys mouse-position

Use the --watch option to capture the location of mouse clicks, and combine it with --output commands to output approximate mouse commands that can be used to replay mouse actions.

# capture mouse commands
sendkeys mouse-position --watch --output commands > mouse_commands.txt

# replay mouse commands
sendkeys --input-file mouse_commands.txt

List of applications names

A list of the current applications that can be activated by SendKeys (--application-name) can be displayed using the apps command.

# list apps that can be activated with --application-name
sendkeys apps

Sample output:

Code             id:com.microsoft.VSCode
Finder           id:com.apple.finder
Google Chrome    id:com.google.Chrome
Safari           id:com.apple.Safari

The first column includes the application name and the second column includes the application's bundle ID.

SendKeys will use --application-name to activate the first application instance that matches either the application name or bundle id (case insensitive). If there are no exact matches, it will attempt to match on whole words for the application name, followed by the bundle id.

Prerequisites

This application will only run on macOS 10.11 or later.

When running from the terminal, ensure that the terminal has permission to use accessibility features. This can be done by navigating to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility and adding your terminal application there.

Installing previous versions

A specific version of the package can be installed by targeting the appropriate release artifact. Here's an example of the command:

brew install --force-bottle https://github.com/socsieng/sendkeys/releases/download/v2.3.0/sendkeys-2.3.0.catalina.bottle.tar.gz