Simulate keyboard and mouse input on Wayland (and X11) Linux desktops with ydotool via uinput
domain: desktop-automation · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Start the required background daemon first — since ydotool v1.0.0, `ydotoold` must be running before any `ydotool` client command will work
Grant the daemon access to `/dev/uinput` (typically requires root, or an equivalent udev rule granting a non-root user access) since it emulates input at the kernel level rather than talking to a display server
Move the mouse with `ydotool mousemove -x <dx> -y <dy>` (relative by default) or `ydotool mousemove --absolute -x <x> -y <y>`
Send raw key events with `ydotool key <keycode>:<state> ...` pairs (e.g. `29:1 56:1 59:1 59:0 56:0 29:0`) since input is expressed as Linux input-event keycodes, not symbolic key names
Type literal text with `ydotool type 'text'`
Prefer ydotool over xdotool specifically when the target session is Wayland (or a mix of X11/Wayland/console/framebuffer apps), since it injects at the uinput layer rather than through X-specific APIs
Known gotchas
ydotool does not read or respect a custom keyboard layout, so `type`/`key` with layout-sensitive characters can produce different characters than an X11-aware tool like xdotool would produce
The project's own README warns its man page is not always current — confirm exact flags with `ydotool --help` on the installed version rather than trusting an older tutorial
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