How to programmatically simulate a mouse click without moving mouse in Cocoa

Question

I am interested in simulating a mouse click event/keyboard stroke on Mac OS X without actually moving the mouse.

In Windows, it is possible to do this using messages:

win32: simulate a click without simulating mouse movement?

Is there an analog of this for Mac OS X? I am aware of Quartz Event Services, but it seems that that API would only restrict me to sending events to the current key window. Is this true? Is it possible to send keyboard/mouse events to non-key windows? I really just need to be able to send a keyboard command to another app.

Answer 1

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to post an answer just in case anybody stumbles upon this.

The two best ways to do this are actually completely platform independent. (Unless you feel like using C, which is unnecessarily verbose for this in my opinion, but if you want to use it see this answer)

1) The easiest way is to use javAuto. (Note: javAuto has moved here). It's pretty much a java program the can compile and run basic automation scripts cross platform. For simulating a mouse click you can use this command:

mouseClick(button, x, y);

For simulating a mouseClick without moving the mouse you can use this:

// get cursor coordinates
int cPos[] = cursorGetPos();

// mouse click at the coordinates you want
mouseClick("left", x, y);

// instantly move the mouse back
mouseMove(cPos[0], cPos[1]);

Since the mouseClick and mouseMove commands don't involve any interim mouse movements, a click will happen at (x, y) but the mouse won't move at all.

2) The next best way to do this is to use regular Java, which will involve a bit more code than the same process in javAuto.

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.InputEvent;

public class example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        //get the current coordinates
        PointerInfo a = MouseInfo.getPointerInfo();
        Point b  = a.getLocation();
        int xOrig = (int)b.getX();
        int yOrig = (int)b.getY();

        try {
            //simulate a click at 10, 50
            Robot r = new Robot();
            r.mouseMove(10, 50);
            r.mousePress(InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK); //press the left mouse button
            r.mouseRelease(InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK); //release the left mouse button

            //move the mouse back to the original position
            r.mouseMove(xOrig, yOrig);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println(e.toString());
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Here is a working C program to simulate N clicks at a coordinate (X,Y):

// Compile instructions:
//
// gcc -o click click.c -Wall -framework ApplicationServices

#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  int x = 0, y = 0, n = 1;
  float duration = 0.1;

  if (argc < 3) {
    printf("USAGE: click X Y [N] [DURATION]\n");
    exit(1);
  }

  x = atoi(argv[1]);
  y = atoi(argv[2]);

  if (argc >= 4) {
    n = atoi(argv[3]);
  }

  if (argc >= 5) {
    duration = atof(argv[4]);
  }

  CGEventRef click_down = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(
    NULL, kCGEventLeftMouseDown,
    CGPointMake(x, y),
    kCGMouseButtonLeft
  );

  CGEventRef click_up = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(
    NULL, kCGEventLeftMouseUp,
    CGPointMake(x, y),
    kCGMouseButtonLeft
  );

  // Now, execute these events with an interval to make them noticeable
  for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, click_down);
    sleep(duration);
    CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, click_up);
    sleep(duration);
  }

  // Release the events
  CFRelease(click_down);
  CFRelease(click_up);

  return 0;
}

Hosted at https://gist.github.com/Dorian/5ae010cd70f02adf2107

Answer 3

You can do this with NSEvent, CGEvent, or Accessibility APIs. The trick is that first you will normally need to make the application you want to click activate first if it is not the front most application. Then, you're just clicking on a point in screen coordinates.