Linux X11 - Global Keyboard Hook

Listening to keyboard events without consuming them in X11 - Keyboard hooking

Here's my quick and dirty example

#include <X11/X.h>
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#include <X11/Xutil.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>


int main ()
{
    Display* d = XOpenDisplay(NULL);
    Window root = DefaultRootWindow(d);
    Window curFocus;
    char buf[17];
    KeySym ks;
    XComposeStatus comp;
    int len;
    int revert;

    XGetInputFocus (d, &curFocus, &revert);
    XSelectInput(d, curFocus, KeyPressMask|KeyReleaseMask|FocusChangeMask);

    while (1)
    {
        XEvent ev;
        XNextEvent(d, &ev);
        switch (ev.type)
        {
            case FocusOut:
                printf ("Focus changed!\n");
                printf ("Old focus is %d\n", (int)curFocus);
                if (curFocus != root)
                    XSelectInput(d, curFocus, 0);
                XGetInputFocus (d, &curFocus, &revert);
                printf ("New focus is %d\n", (int)curFocus);
                if (curFocus == PointerRoot)
                    curFocus = root;
                XSelectInput(d, curFocus, KeyPressMask|KeyReleaseMask|FocusChangeMask);
                break;

            case KeyPress:
                printf ("Got key!\n");
                len = XLookupString(&ev.xkey, buf, 16, &ks, &comp);
                if (len > 0 && isprint(buf[0]))
                {
                    buf[len]=0;
                    printf("String is: %s\n", buf);
                }
                else
                {
                    printf ("Key is: %d\n", (int)ks);
                }
        }

    }
}

It's not reliable but most of the time it works. (It is showing keys I'm typing into this box right now). You may investigate why it does fail sometimes ;) Also it cannot show hotkeys in principle. Hotkeys are grabbed keys, and only one client can get a grabbed key. Absolutely nothing can be done here, short of loading a special X11 extension designed for this purpose (e.g. XEvIE).

system wide keyboard hook on X under linux

XGrabKey on the root window is how xbindkey does it. Be careful about having some alternative method of killing the grab though, it's very annoying to have to go somewhere to ssh into your own box just to kill that process... And that's why, if it was me, xbindkeys+"echo 'moo' > /tmp/moo-fifo" would be the way to do it. That way, you could also control it in any number of other ways you haven't thought of yet.

Hook and block globally mouse in X11

As far as I know the standard X11 protocol doesn't allow this. The XInput 2.0 extension might, but I doubt it.. while Windows assumes a single event queue that every program listens to, so that a program can intercept an event and prevent it from being sent down the queue to other listeners, every X11 client has its own independent queue and all clients that register interest in an event receive an independent copy of it in their queue. This means that under normal circumstances it's impossible for an errant program to block other programs from running; but it also means that, for those times when a client must block other clients, it must do a server grab to prevent the server from processing events for any other client.

Which means you can either

• use an X server proxy (won't be hard, but will be pretty slower)

or

• do it on the input device level. /dev/input/event<n> give you the input events. You can read off the keypresses there and decide if they should propagate further be consumed. Unfortunately there's no real documentation for this, but the header file linux/include/input.h is quite self explanatory.

Grabbing any keypress in X11

You need XGrabKey. This function is specifically designed for implementing hotkeys.

When the desired key combination is pressed, you get the event no matter what, and no other window gets the event.

Error when trying to build a Global Keyboard Hook in Ubuntu Linux

Read more about keyboard X11 events. You will get them only from some X11 windows, if that window has set some of KeyPressMask or KeyReleaseMask bits in its event mask. And that window should be created InputOnly or InputOutput

You are apparently using Qt (which is a good idea). Then, stick to Qt key events.

(if you want to catch all X11 key events, use the root window of the display. But then you are interfering with your window manager, which is a bad idea; learn more about ICCCM and EWMH)

Also, run xev -in a terminal- to understand more about X11 events

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