so I'm trying to make a keyboard shortcut using xdotool. The only thing that I'm missing and that can't find out how to do is this:
How to press the option key on my keyboard. In more general case, and this would solve my problem as well, how to press a key using xdotool based on keycode (if you know about other program which can do this, I don't mind using that instead).
I have a windows keyboard and there is this 'option button' (in between alt gr
and right ctrl
), when pressed it opens the right-click menu (right next to where the typing cursor is). I need to press this button in a script somehow. I found out (using showkey -k
) that the keycode of this key is 127, but I can't make xdotool to press it.
Any ideas on how to do this?
PS: I know that I can simulate a right-click by xdotool click 3
but that doesn't help because the right click then occurs where the mouse pointer is and I need it to happen where the typing cursor is.
Thank you 🙂
Best Answer
Problem solved thanks to the comment from Jacob Vlijm.
The name of the button can be found this way: run
xev
, then press the button and the name shows up in the brackets. In my case it was this:keycode 135 (keysym 0xff67, Menu)
, here Menu is the name of the key.Then I could run
xdotool Menu
. However to make it work with a custom shortcut I had to addsleep
before it, so I ended up with this code:and it works! :)
BTW: The purpose of this whole thing was to quickly switch between spelling languages in Chrome.