What is xdotool?

This tool lets you programatically (or manually) simulate keyboard input and mouse activity, move and resize windows, etc. It does this using X11's XTEST extension and other Xlib functions.

Mailing list

The xdotool users mailing list is: xdotool-users@googlegroups.com

I'll be announcing new versions on this mailing list. Additionally, if you want help or want to contribute patches to xdotool, the mailing list is a good place to go.

If you want to file a bug, you can do that on my googlecode issue tracker.

Prerequisites

• xlib (pkg-config xlib) - Standard Xlib library
• xtst (pkg-config xtest) - XTEST library

Download

xdotool-20091231.02.tar.gz

Looking for older versions? Check the archive.

Debian users can install xdotool with apt-get.

Build Instructions

'make xdotool'

If the build fails, it might be because you don't have the required libraries and header files installed. You will need to set install them, and if you don't have pkg-config for x11 and xtst, set DEFAULT_LIBS and DEFAULT_INC (see the Makefile) correctly.

How to use it

Basic usage is: xdotool <cmd> <args>

Read the documentation here

Example: focus the firefox url bar

WID=`xdotool search "Mozilla Firefox" | head -1`
xdotool windowfocus $WID
xdotool key ctrl+l

Example: Resize all visible gnome-terminal windows

WIDS=`xdotool search --onlyvisible --name "gnome-terminal"`
for id in $WIDS; do
  xdotool windowsize $id 500 500
done