- Script and phrase metadata are no longer stored as hidden dotfiles. Existing scripts should be automatically converted, but if switch back to versions prior to this one, you will need to copy or symlink them back to dotfile form.
- Scripting API files are now in Python packages, which may require adjusting imports if you have scripts that import them directly.
- Change the default phrase send mode to ctrl+v (paste using clipboard) rather than sending keys one at a time.
- This version represents some significant refactoring since the previous update, so bug reports will be highly appreciated.
- Add two sections to the issue template.
- Change all sudo apt references in master to sudo apt-get to satisfy part of issue #772.
- Bump Python version in autokey.spec AND PKG-INFO.
- Update the README.rst file to satisfy part of issue #681 and issue #779.
- Update the actions in the build.yml file to the latest versions in the GitHub Marketplace.
- Remove extra unneeded curly bracket from line 350 of engine.py for the API documentation.
- Update the actions in the pages.yml file to the latest versions in the GitHub Marketplace.
engine API object
- Deprecated: Confusingly named engine.create_abbreviation() and engine.create_hotkey() are deprecated and will be removed in the future. Use engine.create_phrase() with appropriate arguments instead.
- Extended: engine.create_phrase() now supports multiple new optional arguments, allowing to fully configure the created phrase. It can set everything the GUI can do.
- New: Scripts can use engine.get_triggered_abbreviation() to read which abbreviation triggered it’s execution. The function returns a tuple containing the abbreviation and the trigger character (the character that 'completed' or 'confirmed' the abbreviation. Both tuple elements are None if the script was not triggered by an abbreviation. The trigger character is None if the script was configured to 'trigger immediately'. The function always returns a tuple, so direct tuple unpacking like abbreviation, trigger = engine.get_triggered_abbreviation() will always work.
- Allow creation of 'temporary' hotkeys and whole folders (which do not persist between sessions).
- Allow overriding existing hotkeys when creating phrases with hotkeys.
- Allow creation of folders.
- Add set_clipboard_image methods for both Gtk and Qt. Takes a file path to an image to load into the clipboard.
keyboard API object
- keyboard.send_keys() got a new optional parameter send_mode, allowing to specify how the given text is sent. It basically offers the same pasting options as are available to AutoKey Phrases.
- keyboard.send_keys() now raises a TypeError instead of a generic AssertionError, if parameters don’t match the expected types.
New clipboard API method - Change the default phrase send mode to ctrl+v (paste using clipboard) rather than sending keys one at a time.
New mouse API object
- Add mouse drag, click and scroll options to the API.
- Added a --version command line switch. It prints the current AutoKey version on the standard output and then exits.
- (GTK) Warn user about missing required and optional programs on startup.
- (GTK) UI will now update when changes are detected to watched files.
- (GTK) refresh UI if script files are modified externally
- Use system monospace font
- Add setting to change GtkSourceView theme, (defaults to classic).
- Add wait_for_keyevent scripting function.
- Rewrote script error logging system, with a neat Script Error Dialog to go with it.
- <script> script macros accept absolute paths.
- Macro arguments can be quoted, allowing arguments containing spaces.
- Macro arguments can contain angle bracket characters, if escaped.
- Add <system> macro for replacing phrase contents with output of an external process.
- Allow autokey-run to accept full paths to python scripts (if no full path is given, will treat as an existing Autokey script name instead).
- Expand unicode characters using code points (hacky workaround for being unable to send actual unicode).
- Allow disabling Capslock in settings
- Link to script .py and .json above editor.
- Add appropriate keywords to .desktop files for both UIs.
- Build debs and update pypi on new releases
- Both QT and GTK versions will reload hotkeys after a keymap change event.
- Fix locking issue
- Expose Alt_GR as a hotkey modifier on GTK.
- Fix issue with pip installation reporting a missing module
- Add missing closing backtick to the code snippet on line 113 of the CHANGELOG.rst file. Fixes issue #906.
- Fixed API call system.exec_command() crashing, if output capturing is active, but the executed command has empty output. Fixes issue #379
- Fixed AutoKey PNG icon size. Now, the icon size is 96x96 pixels, fixing Lintian warnings on Debian. Fixes issue #369
Other changes ---------
- Add CI for testing
- Update pip installation requirements
- Add CONTRIBUTERS.rst
- Internal Code cleanup. The configuration handling module is split into multiple modules inside a dedicated package.
- Change clipboard wording in the AutoKey documentation.
- Update formatting and wording in the AutoKey GTK and Qt clipboard API documentation.
- Remove one reference to X in the AutoKey GTK clipboard API documentation.
- Remove one reference to mouse in the AutoKey Qt clipboard API documentation.
- AutoKey now has a working test environment again. pytest based unit-tests can be launched from the source checkout using python3 setup.py test
- Fix typo: Replace all occurrences of "they key" with "the key" in the AutoKey documentation.
- Rename the bug.yaml file to bug.yml.
- Add the config.yml file to the /.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE directory to prevent blank issues from being offered and created. Fixes #897
- Remove unnecessary white-space from the config.yml file.
New Dependencies (test-time only)
The new unit tests introduce two new, test-time only dependencies. These are used for unit tests only and not during normal AutoKey execution.
- pytest
- PyHamcrest
- Fix crash in qt macro recording window.
- Beta: Fix Segfault from modifying files when open in off-screen AK window
- Fix qt crashing when changing a hotkey
- Fix installation not copying predefined user files (fix #578)
- Fix clear button not unsetting hotkeys
- Fix updating of sidecar files
- Build debs and update pypi on new releases
- Add set_clipboard_image methods for both Gtk and Qt. Takes a file path to an image to load into the clipboard.
- Fix issue with pip installation reporting a missing module
- Script and phrase metadata are no longer stored as hidden dotfiles. Existing scripts should be automatically converted, but if switch back to versions prior to this one, you will need to copy or symlink them back to dotfile form.
- Scripting API files are now in Python packages, which may require adjusting imports if you have scripts that import them directly.
- Change the default phrase send mode to ctrl+v (paste using clipboard) rather than sending keys one at a time.
- This version represents some significant refactoring since the previous update, so bug reports will be highly appreciated.
engine API object
- Deprecated: Confusingly named engine.create_abbreviation() and engine.create_hotkey() are deprecated and will be removed in the future. Use engine.create_phrase() with appropriate arguments instead.
- Extended: engine.create_phrase() now supports multiple new optional arguments, allowing to fully configure the created phrase. It can set everything the GUI can do.
- New: Scripts can use engine.get_triggered_abbreviation() to read which abbreviation triggered it’s execution. The function returns a tuple containing the abbreviation and the trigger character (the character that 'completed' or 'confirmed' the abbreviation. Both tuple elements are None if the script was not triggered by an abbreviation. The trigger character is None if the script was configured to 'trigger immediately'. The function always returns a tuple, so direct tuple unpacking like abbreviation, trigger = engine.get_triggered_abbreviation() will always work.
- Allow creation of 'temporary' hotkeys and whole folders (which do not persist between sessions).
- Allow overriding existing hotkeys when creating phrases with hotkeys.
- Allow creation of folders.
keyboard API object
- keyboard.send_keys() got a new optional parameter send_mode, allowing to specify how the given text is sent. It basically offers the same pasting options as are available to AutoKey Phrases.
- keyboard.send_keys() now raises a TypeError instead of a generic AssertionError, if parameters don’t match the expected types.
New clipboard API method - Change the default phrase send mode to ctrl+v (paste using clipboard) rather than sending keys one at a time.
New mouse API object
- Add mouse drag, click and scroll options to the API.
- Added a --version command line switch. It prints the current AutoKey version on the standard output and then exits.
- (GTK) Warn user about missing required and optional programs on startup.
- (GTK) UI will now update when changes are detected to watched files.
- (GTK) refresh UI if script files are modified externally
- Use system monospace font
- Add setting to change GtkSourceView theme, (defaults to classic).
- Add wait_for_keyevent scripting function.
- Rewrote script error logging system, with a neat Script Error Dialog to go with it.
- <script> script macros accept absolute paths.
- Macro arguments can be quoted, allowing arguments containing spaces.
- Macro arguments can contain angle bracket characters, if escaped.
- Add <system> macro for replacing phrase contents with output of an external process.
- Allow autokey-run to accept full paths to python scripts (if no full path is given, will treat as an existing Autokey script name instead).
- Expand unicode characters using code points (hacky workaround for being unable to send actual unicode).
- Allow disabling Capslock in settings
- Link to script .py and .json above editor.
- Add appropriate keywords to .desktop files for both UIs.
- Both QT and GTK versions will reload hotkeys after a keymap change event.
- Fix locking issue
- Expose Alt_GR as a hotkey modifier on GTK.
- (GTK) Fixed GUI lock-up, if multiple script error notifications are posted in quick succession. The notifications are now rate-limited and won’t post more than one notification per second. Fixes issue #383
- Fixed API call system.exec_command() crashing, if output capturing is active, but the executed command has empty output. Fixes issue #379
- Fixed AutoKey PNG icon size. Now, the icon size is 96x96 pixels, fixing Lintian warnings on Debian. Fixes issue #369
Other changes ---------
- Add CI for testing
- Update pip installation requirements
- Add CONTRIBUTERS.rst
- Internal Code cleanup. The configuration handling module is split into multiple modules inside a dedicated package.
- AutoKey now has a working test environment again. pytest based unit-tests can be launched from the source checkout using python3 setup.py test
New Dependencies (test-time only)
The new unit tests introduce two new, test-time only dependencies. These are used for unit tests only and not during normal AutoKey execution.
- pytest
- PyHamcrest
- Mitigate crashes when entering invalid Python regular expressions in the window filter dialogue. Fixes issue #212
- Added option to disable the handling of the Capslock modifier key. Fixes issues when that key is remapped to something else, for example Ctrl. The new option can be found in the settings dialogue. Fixes issues #95, #291
- API function system.exec_command() now only trims the last character in the output, if it is actually a newline character. If the executed command does not output a newline at the end, the full output is returned. Fixes issue #354
- Fixed wrong optional argument in man page for autokey-run. Fixed by pull request #361
- Removed unnecessarily set executable bit from several AutoKey SVG icons. Fixed by pull request #363
- Prevent data losses when deleting or moving directories from within AutoKey. AutoKey will only delete data it knows and keep unknown user data. So adding $HOME and then removing it again will not purge everything below it. Affected were deleting directories and moving them via drag & drop. Fixes issues #171, #332
- Qt GUI: Fix issue with Python 3.7.4 and PyQt 5.11-5.13.0 that prevented AutoKey from starting on certain distributions shipping this configuration, notably Kubuntu 19.10. Fixes issues #313, #301
- Qt GUI: Fix crash when saving the currently edited item, after deselecting it in the tree view. Fixes issue #285
- Qt GUI: Disable Main window -> Tools -> Insert Macro when not editing a Phrase. Fixes issue #276
- Qt GUI: Add a warning that explains possible data loss when creating top level directories at used specified locations. See issue #171
- GTK GUI: Fix application hang when setting a custom value for "Trigger on" in the Abbreviation settings dialogue. Fixes issue #315
- GTK GUI: Fixed system tray icon context menu entry
View script error, which was non-functional, if the main window is closed. The entry now opens the main window first as a workaround, because a proper fix will require a major code overhaul. Fixes #222 - Qt GUI: Fixed the truncated GPLv3 license text shown in the About AutoKey dialogue. The dialogue window now shows the full license text. Fixes #258
- Hardened the logic to read application window titles. AutoKey now works, if applications do not set the
_NET_WM_VISIBLE_NAMEproperty of their windows. Fixes #257 - Fixed Phrase expansion using the Keyboard method, which was broken if AutoKey was started for the first time. Fixes #274
- Improved the debug logging output: Removed unnecessary output, clarified wordings, etc. See #230
- Qt GUI: Display the current Python version number in the About dialogue.
- Fix the combination of phrase settings
Match phrase case to typed abbreviationandTrigger immediatelyto cause Scripts and Phrases to trigger on each and every key press. Fixes issue #254 introduced in 0.95.5.
- Fix window filter detection always returning Title:
FocusProxy, Class: Focus-Proxy-Window.FocusProxy on Java AWT applications. It now detects the proper window title and WM_CLASS attribute for Java AWT applications. Fixes issue #113 - GTK GUI: Fix the window filter detection dialogue. On clicking OK, it hung the whole application. Now the dialogue window works as intended. Fixes issue #229
- Fix abbreviation case folding (ignore case option) with abbreviations defined as UPPER CASE in the abbreviation dialogue. Options
Ignore caseandMatch casenow work with upper case abbreviations. Fixes issue #197 - Prevent the keyboard from staying grabbed by AutoKey if exceptions are thrown while AutoKey performs a clipboard pasting action. Fixes issues #72, #225
- Prevent writing
Noneto the clipboard. This prevents autokey-gtk from deadlocking, caused by an unreleased mutex. Fixes issue #226 - Restrict Phrase Undo functionality to phrases without special keys, because phrases containing special keys cannot be reliably undone. Fixes issue #196
- Clarified autosave option wording in the settings window. The option now explicitly states what it does. Fixes issue #194
- Force AutoKey to exit, if the X server connection closes, most probably at logout or session end. Fixes issue #198
- Added »View script error« entry to the Tray icon context menu, like in the GTK GUI. Part of issue #158
- Tray icon turns red, when scripts raise an error, like in the GTK GUI. Part of issue #158
- If changing the tray icon theme in the settings (light or dark), instantly apply the new theme, without requiring an application restart. Part of issue #158
- The tray icon now works, after if it is disabled in the settings and then enabled again. Fixes issue #223
- Enable
setup.pyto be directly called from the system shell. Fixes issue #218 - Cleaned up some legacy leftovers in the autokey repository
- Fix grabbed hotkeys being incorrectly received by other applications.
- Fixed crashes when processing <code> literals in strings. It is now possible to place <code> and <code/> literals in Phrases. Additionally, such literals can be typed in scripts using the keyboard.send_keys function.
- Increased the reliability of the window filter detection dialog in autokey-qt. The dialog allows sampling windows to aid writing window filters. Due to timing issues in certain cases, sometimes the window title of the previously active window was returned.
- Phrase expansion can now always be undone using the backspace key, if the feature is enabled in the settings. Previously it was only be possible if the phrase was triggered by an abbreviation. Now it also works when using hotkeys or selecting phrases from menus. This also prevents crashes in certain cases.
- Qt GUI: Add support for automatically starting autokey-qt during login. It can be configured in the settings dialogue. The configuration option allows to choose which GUI is automatically started, if both autokey-qt and autokey-gtk are installed simultaneously, and whether the main window should be shown automatically on launch.
- Qt GUI: Added the notification icon theme selection to the settings dialogue. The added section in the general settings allow to choose between the light and dark theme, like in the autokey-gtk settings dialogue. Changing this setting currently requires an application restart to take effect.
- Scripting API: The Python __file__ global variable is now properly set for AutoKey scripts. It contains the full path to the Python script file currently running. Previously, it contained the full path to the service.py file of the currently running AutoKey instance.
- Crash fix: Skip import of the AT-SPI interface, if importing of pyatspi fails with a SyntaxError. This may happen with certain versions of pyatspi on Python 3.7. For details see #173
- Fix serializing the store during saving, if user stores recursive data structures. It now handles/skips lists that contain themselves or other circular referenced data structures.
- GTK GUI: Fix autostart handling: Create the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart (~/.config/autostart) directory, if it is not already present. Fixes #149
- Qt GUI: Create the user data directories before initializing the logger system. This prevents crashes when autokey-qt is used for the first time or when the user wiped all previous data. Fixes #170
- Qt GUI: Fix saving the "Always prompt before running this script" checkbox content when editing scripts. This option now works as intended again.
- Stop shipping the autokey.png icon file inside a scalable icon theme directory. Moved to the appropriate raster image directory.
- Corrected broken dependency package name in setup.py. The library is called python-xlib and not python3-xlib on PyPI.
- Fix broken imports in autokey-shell script
- Skip non-json-serializable data in script storage (both script local and global) during saving. This allows putting non-serializable items (like function objects) into the store without crashing autokey during saving.
- Qt GUI: Fix minor bug when creating new items. Created items are now properly selected for renaming directly after creation.
- Minor code simplifications. Removed unnecessary functions that were obsoleted during prior changes.
This is a small bug fixing release.
- Fix a long standing bug that errors occurring during phrase parsing or script execution can lock up the user keyboard. Make sure to always release the keyboard after grabbing it. See #72, launchpad_1551054
- Qt GUI: Fix saving the content of the log view to a file using the context menu entry.
- Some small, internal code quality improvements.
Resurrected, re-written and cleaned up the autokey-qt Qt GUI. autokey-qt is now a pure PyQt5 application, only dependent on currently supported libraries.
- The main window now keeps its complete state when closed and re-opened (excluding complete application restarts). This includes the currently selected item(s) in the tree view on the left of the main window, selected text and cursor position in the editor on the right if currently editing a script or phrase.
- The entries in the popup menu, that is shown when a hotkey assigned to a folder is pressed, now show icons based on their type (folder, phrase or script). This also works when items are configured to be shown in the system tray icon context menu.
- The A autokey application icons are now always displayed correctly, both in the main window and the system tray icon.
- Various menu actions now have system dependent keyboard shortcuts, that should adjust to the expected default of the user’s current platform/desktop environment.
- Added icons and descriptive tooltip texts to various buttons.
- The enable monitoring checkboxes (both in the Settings menu and the tray icon context menu) now properly react to pressing the global hotkey for this action and thus stay in sync. (Even if the hotkey is used while the menu is shown.)
- Customizing the main window toolbar entries and keyboard shortcuts to trigger various UI actions is no longer possible. This feature was provided by the KDE4 libraries and is currently dropped.
- The previous, KDE4-based About dialogue is replaced with a very minimalistic one.
- The settings dialogue heavily used the KDE4 functionalities. During the port to Qt5, the dialogue lost some visual style, but all core functionality is kept.
- Removed dependencies on deprecated and unmaintained PyQt4 and PyKDE4 libraries.
- Removed dependency on dbus.mainloop.qt, instead use the DBus support built into Qt5.
- Now depend on PyQt5, the Qt5 SVG module and the Qt5 QScintilla2 module.
Optionally depend on pyrcc5 command line tool to compile Qt resources into a Python module.
Qt UI files are no longer compiled using pykdeuic4, Removed the old compiler wrapper script in commit 6eeeb92f.
The system tray icon is shown, but non-functional, after enabling it in the settings dialogue. AutoKey Qt has to be restarted for the tray icon to start working. This should have no impact on the normal daily use.
The hide tray icon entry in the tray icon context menu now hides the icon for the current session only. The entry does not permanently disable the tray icon any more without any confirmation. Now, the only way to permanently disable the tray icon is through using the appropriate setting in the settings dialogue.
- Pasting using both Clipboard and Mouse selection works in both the Qt and GTK GUI. See #101
- Fixed restoring the clipboard after a paste is performed. Both GUIs now restore the previous clipboard content, after a phrase is pasted.
- Added a colour picker dialogue to the GTK dialog class, because the used zenity now supports it.
- The picked colour is returned as three integers using the ColourData NamedTuple, providing both index based access and attribute access, using the channel names (r, g, b). Additionally, ColourData provides some conversion methods.
- See Pull request #148. The dialog classes for user input in scripts now return typed NamedTuple tuples instead of plain tuples. This change is safe as long as users do not perform needlessly restrictive type checks in their scripts (e.g. if type(returned_data) == type(tuple()): ...). User scripts doing so will break.
- The KDialog based colour picker now also returns a ColourData instance instead of a HTML style hex string, thus making this portable between both GTK and Qt GUIs. AutoKey users previously using the old KDE GUI and using the colour picker dialogue have to port their scripts. A simple fix is using the html_code property of the returned ColourData instance.
- Re-introduce the newline trimming for system.exec_command() function. During the porting to Python 3, the newline trimming was removed, causing users various issues with unexpected newline characters at end of output. Now properly remove the _last newline at end of command output. (See issues #75, #92, #145)
- Applied various code style improvements to the scripting module.
- Fix the KDialog based colour picker provided in the scripting API. Newer versions of KDialog require an additional parameter, which is added now.
- Fixed crashes related to mouse pasting when using the GTK GUI.
- Both autokey-gtk and autokey-qt are now automatically generated setuptools entry-points.
- autokey-gtk can now be launched directly from the autokey source tree.
From the shell, cd into the lib directory, then use
<path_to_autokey_source_dir>/lib$ python3 -m autokey.gtkui [-l] [-c]
# Or alternatively, to launch autokey-qt use:
<path_to_autokey_source_dir>/lib$ python3 -m autokey.qtui [-l] [-c]- Various internal code style improvements at various locations, like added type hints, PEP8 style fixes, etc.
- Various README updates
- Ported autokey-run from the legacy optparse module to the new Python 3 argparse module
- Use $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and $XDG_DATA_HOME directories for lock and log file
- Added support for function keys F13 to F35
- Refactored the iomediator modules into a package. Applied various code cleanups and fixes.
- The scripting global storage now returns None if the requested key is not present.
- Improved the error messages in autokey-run. It is now clear that autokey has to run in the background for autokey-run to work.
- Added a LICENSE file containing the GPL v3 license terms.
Fixed a regression with setup.py install_requires keyword argument. Updated the GitHub issue template.
- Readme updates
- Depend on Ubuntu appindicator
- Leverage libappindicator completely, fix "View script error"
This release contains various bug/crash fixes
- Renamed repository from autokey-py3 to autokey
- Moved the AutoKey source code out of src folder one level up.
- Removed donate button
- autokey-gtk script is now a setuptools generated entry point
- Require GTK 3.0 to fix autokey-gtk startup
- Updated various web links around the codebase
- New feature: Return the result of wait events in the iomediator module.
- Ensure Compatibility with official python-xlib
- Fixed several GTK related warnings
- GTK GUI: Add feature to trigger popupmenu items with letters, rather than numbers.
- Add an AUR link
Bugfix: Prevent clipboard related crashes with GTK3.
Bugfix for defining abbreviations by @kuhanalog
Read user scripts with UTF-8 encoding.
Internal changes: Changed the data structure of the input stack.
Added functions “acknowledge_gnome_notification” and “move_to_pat”, more details here.
Added an interactive shell launcher, “autokey-shell”. “autokey-shell” allows you to run some AutoKey functions interactively. Read this for more details.
Added a new function “click_on_pat” for use in user scripts. See this for more details.
This describes some of the changes to the original AutoKey source code.
Python 3 is less tolerant of circular imports so some files were split into several files. Those pieces of the original have their file names prefixed with the original's.
Eliminate possible deadlock. Changed
p = subprocess.Popen([…], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
retCode = p.wait()
output = p.stdout.read()[:-1] # Drop trailing newlineto
p = subprocess.Popen([…], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output = p.communicate()[0].decode()[:-1] # Drop trailing newline
retCode = p.returncodeThe former may cause a deadlock, for more information, see Python docs. This pattern appears several times in the source codes.
For a “gi.repository.Notify.Notification” object, test if method “attach_to_status_icon” exists before calling. After this fix, errors in user scripts will trigger a notification.
Respect XDG standard. Details here.
Corrected a typo in manpage of autokey-run.
For the GTK GUI, after script error is viewed, tray icon is reverted back to original.
In setup.py, the “/usr/” prefix to the directory names in the data_files argument were removed to allow for non-root install.
Removed the “WINDOWID” environment variable so that zenity is not tied to the window from which it was launched.
Modified the launcher and other files to allow for editable installs (“pip install -e”).
Added an “about” dialog for the Python 3 port.
Changed hyperlink for bug reports.