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Peter
Asked: 2010-12-20 14:10:13 +0800 CST

Program to press a key at timed intervals

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I was wondering if there was an open source program that would allow me to have a certain keystroke/key combination pressed every say, two seconds or so.

keyboard

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Yes, there is an open source program to create fake keyboard and mouse inputs for GNU/Linux. It is called Xdotool Install Xdotool.

    To press a key (in this example 'a') every two seconds you can use a script like this :

    #!/bin/bash

while true; do
  xdotool key a
  sleep 2
done

    If you make this script executable and add it to Startup Applications it will press 'a' every two seconds.

    Here is the documentation for Xdotool

    And here is the specific part on keyboard commands

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  2. If you are using a Logitech keyboard, there is a package called "g15macro" in the Ubuntu repo that is useful. Otherwise there are other open source applications such as "xmacro" and "xnee".

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