Simulate mouse movement in Ubuntu

Question

Problem

Am looking to automatically move the mouse cursor and simulate mouse button clicks from the command-line using an external script. Am not looking to:

• Record mouse movement and playback (e.g., xnee, xmacro)
• Instantly move the mouse from one location to another (e.g., xdotool, Python's warp_pointer)

Ideal Solution

What I'd like to do is the following:

1. Edit a simple script file (e.g., mouse-script.txt).
2. Add a list of coordinates, movement speeds, delays, and button clicks. For example:

   (x, y, rate) = (500, 500, 50)
   sleep = 5
   click = left
   

3. Run the script: xsim < mouse-script.txt.

Question

How do you automate mouse movement so that it transitions from its current location to another spot on the screen, at a specific velocity? For example:

xdotool mousemove 500 500 --rate 50

The --rate 50 doesn't exist with xdotool.

Answer 1

1. Download xaut for Python
2. Follow the README instructions
3. Run:

   sudo apt-get install swig x11proto-xext-dev libx11-dev libxtst-dev
   cd /usr/local/src
   tar zxf xaut-0.2.0.tar.gz
   ./configure
   

4. Edit src/Makefile
5. Change the CFLAGS line as follows:

   CFLAGS = -Wall -fPIC -fno-stack-protector

6. Run:

   make
   

7. Copy /usr/local/src/xaut-0.2.0/python/build/lib/* to a new directory.
8. Change to that new directory.
9. Copy and paste the following script into mm.py:

   import xaut
   mouse = xaut.mouse()
   delay mouse.move_delay( 100 )
   mouse.move( 500, 500 )
   

10. Run the script:

    python mm.py

Answer 2

on newer versions of Ubuntu (14.04+), you can use Autopilot, a UI testing tool for Ubuntu. It is made for creating and running user interface tests, but can also be used for basic GUI automation tasks.

to install:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-autopilot

an example script (Python3) to automate mouse movement:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from autopilot.input import Mouse

mouse = Mouse.create()
mouse.move(100, 50)
mouse.click()

You would run this just like any other Python3 script. Watch your mouse pointer move!