Skip to main content

System wide hotkeys

Project description

System Hotkey

Multi platform system wide hotkeys for python 3,

Currently no mac or python2 support :(

Mac support is coming in a few years i would say!

Installation

the old

pip3 install system_hotkey

should do the trick

Windows

install pywin32

Linux

For x11 you will can either use xcffib (bsd license), or you may use the python xlib bindings (gpl license)

Usage

Input Keysyms

System hotkeys uses the keysym names from xlib for everything besides modifiers.(although case insensitive) grep for vk_codes for a list of available chars. If you are unable to bind to a certain key please let us know.

You can bind directly to symbols such as [”’,. etc Numpad keys can be binded by prefixing with kp_.

Supported modifiers include:

  • control

  • shift

  • super (win key)

  • alt

A InvalidKeyError will be raised if a key was not understood

from system_hotkey import SystemHotkey
hk = SystemHotkeys()
hk.register(('control', 'shift', 'h'), callback=lambda:print("Easy!"))

A SystemRegisterError will be raised if a hotkey is already in use.

To unregister a hotkey

hk.unregister(('control', 'shift', 'h'))

A KeyError will be raised if the combination is not already grabbed.

A UnregisterError will be raised if unregistering failed for any other reason.

If you want you can pass in a custom consumer:

def some_func(self, event, hotkey, args):
    pass

hk = SystemHotkeys(consumer=some_func)
hk.register(hotkey, arg1, arg2, arg3)

So you have a master function that receives all hotkey presses and can delegate as desired.

Note Modifier keys are independent of order i.e control + alt + del is the same as alt + control + del

Features

  • Support for up to 3 modifiers and a key

Limitations

  • I have only mapped most common keys, i have not experimented with Unicode/Japanese characters etc. It’s only a matter of mapping a name to the keysym on Linux and virtual key code on windows.

  • binding to kp_left (key pad left) will also bind to kp_4, there is a flag (unite_kp) to toggle this behaviour but it is experimental

To be done

Mac support

eta > 9 months

Version Release Notes

1.0.0

  • calls to the unregister and register are now thread safe

  • kp keys work properly

  • kp_unite option

0.1.4

  • Bug fix on linux where pressing numlock would crash us..

0.1.3

  • Custom args can now be passed to a custom consumer

Authors and Contributors

Timothy Eichler

Project details


Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page