How can I have a key pressed at a specific time?

Question

I want to press a certain key (e.g. 'p') in a certain time (e.g. at 00:00), how can I accomplish this? I'm aware of Can a Mac be programmed to simulate pressing a key at a certain rate via software? but this doesn't include a timer of any kind.

P.S. I'm running at macOS 10.13 High Seirra

Answer 1

at + cliclick

You can use cliclick to execute your key presses and at (ships with macos) to schedule the execution of the command.

echo 'cliclick kp:"volume-up"' | at 09:00

If you want to schedule an event like to occur at some regular interval (e.g. some time every day, on Mondays, the first of each month, every ten minutes) you can use crontab. Open up the crontab list of jobs with crontab -e in a terminal. Then put in an entry like:

0 0 * * * cliclick kp:"volume-up"

Here are the man pages for at and cron if you want to see more details about how to get the behavior you want.

but first!

If you can run other at jobs but using cliclick with one is causing problems, just write a shell script with the command in it and run that with at. e.g:

echo 'zsh ~/clicktest.sh' | at 13:00

I also had problems just getting at to work at first. Apple seems to have made it pretty difficult to use at. You have to run the following command as root to enable the atrun program (which processes at jobs):

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

(To run it as root use sudo su to switch to root and then switch back with exit)

... just in case

Just to be safe I altered the file from the launchctl command - /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist - changing the entry "Disabled" to false.

Since this is a read-only volume you need to have SIP turned off and then use mount -uw / to make it writable. Then you have to change the permissions on the file to make it writable. e.g.

chmod 777 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

Then change the permissions back to their previous state or the OS will complain when it goes to load the plist again:

chmod 644 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

I don't think you need to do all this I just did it because I was worried it might not launch atrun automatically on boot unless I changed the plist.

Answer 2

this AppleScript should do the trick:

—- time of day to press key is given in seconds
set timeToExecute to 70560 -- time in seconds =19h36
set currDate to current date

-- do nothing on Saturday and Sunday or this script is launched after 19h36
if weekday of currDate is in {Saturday, Sunday} or (time of currDate) > timeToQuit then return

delay (timeToQuit - (time of currDate)) -- wait 

—- set the number of keypresses
repeat 5 times

—- the “y” key is pressed
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "y" using command down

—- every 1/10 of a seconds
delay 0.1
end repeat
end tell