Sendkeys: Command line tool for automating keystrokes and mouse events on macOS

Posted by nateb2022 7/6/2025

32 points | 12 comments

supersixirene 7/6/2025|

This is legend. I’ll be putting this to extensive use tomorrow.

robterrell 7/6/2025|

You've always had this ability, but with more convoluted syntax:

  osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke \"whatever\""

Specify the application too with multiple -e parameters. This will copy whatever is selected in Safari:

  osascript -e "tell application \"Safari\" to activate" -e "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke \"c\" using {command down}"

eviks 7/7/2025||

How do you stimulate delays, animation intervals, key down/ups a with System Events?

robterrell 7/7/2025|||

AppleScript supports the "delay" command. System Events supports both "keydown" and "keyup" in addition to keystroke.

bestham 7/7/2025|||

Apple Script is a programming language and you have full control flow at your disposal to wait and branch as needed.

eviks 7/7/2025||

This is too generic to answer this specific question. Key down, for example, is not an inherent property of a programming language.

(and neither is delay precision guarantees, which might be important for some key sequences)

pkoird 7/7/2025||

Wonder how this compares to Autohotkey on Windows.

eviks 7/7/2025|

Ahk isn't cli, and also is a full-blown programming language, so not as limited in its input

lukaslukas 7/6/2025||

Nice. But why?

ivanche 7/6/2025|

For example to automate what couldn't be automated otherwise.

supersixirene 7/6/2025||

For example to deal with software designers that think web browsers are people

biomcgary 7/7/2025|

Now to finetune my local LLM on the sendkeys syntax, add kyutai for streaming voice recognition, and my mac will be fully voice operable.