Xorg – How to Monitor Keyboard and Mouse Events in X

eventskeyboardmousexorg

Is it possible to display all events that are generated in Xorg? Such as keyboard pressed, mouse events…?

Best Answer

A pretty quick search would likely yield xev as a result. It will not show you everything that is pressed or typed in X ever. But rather, will allow you to see information about keycodes and mouse movements.

However, with the -root option, you might be able to get xev to monitor the whole X session. Note, if you do this, you'll make it pretty difficult to actually interact with any program since xev will be capturing all input.

xev -root comes with an implied "YMMV". Another possible solution is to use xinput to get the job done (though you need a recent version (1.6.1 or above)):

$ xinput test-xi2 --root

While the above should be able to capture all events, if your xinput doesn't support test-xi2 or --root, you can use xinput test on a particular keyboard or mouse device.

See also this other question: Record every keystroke and store in a file

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