Welcome to AutoKey, the free desktop automation utility for Linux.

Do you often use

templates, repeat keystrokes or other repetitive tasks? If so, AutoKey is a great
toolkit you do not want to miss out on!

What is AutoKey?
Let’s say you often type your email address, or your postal address. It can be a bit
frustrating to have to type it out every time. Let AutoKey do it for you! All you have to
do is to associate a keyboard shortcut – a set of keystroke events – with a particular
blurb of text.

Another easy to setup function is keyboard automation. AutoKey supports various

key events like a left or right cursor press (the left and right arrow on your keyboard).
To include this in your text blurb, all you have to is to use a small command which
represents what to do:

In this sequence, we insert (as text) the code HTML tag and then press the left key
seven times. This is very handy when you’re developing HTML in a text editor and
would like to quickly insert a code tag and be taken back to the place where the code
started (first code tag), and before the code block ends (second tag, /code). In other
words, the seven left presses bring us nicely to just inside the >< brackets.

We can also automate form-filling by inserting tabs etc.

Regrettably, there are some minor issues with the AutoKey program that you should
be aware of. On Ubuntu 20.04.1 and using the dpkg based installation, AutoKey may
crash when trying to record a macro by using the keyboard/mouse (Tools > Record
keyboard/mouse). This functionality is generally speaking not needed for the
purposes described in this guide.

Another issue is that AutoKey is somewhat complex to get setup the first time unless
you have a guide like this one to follow. Especially the possibility to assign keyboard
shortcuts (abbreviations as well as hotkeys) to folders as well as individual ‘phrases’
(think about this term as actual keyboard assignments to text blurbs).
Finally, AutoKey, at least on Ubuntu 20.04.1 sometimes fails to respond to a
keyboard sequence you’ve programmed it to respond to. An easy workaround for
this issue is to click the AutoKey icon on the dock to bring it to the foreground and
click it. You will find if you swap back to your workspace, the key sequences will
work again.

Even with these shortcomings, which may be resolved in due time, AutoKey is a
must-have tool. Not having to type one’s address over and over, pressing only two to
three keys to paste in your email (any keystrokes are removed automatically), and
the ability to have full document templates at the price of a few keys and a mouse
click (to confirm the keyboard sequence), are invaluable.

Installing AutoKey
This guide assume you already have AutoKey up and running on your system. If you
haven’t installed it yet, there are detailed instructions on the AutoKey project page on
GitHub for various operating systems:

For Ubuntu, Mint and other Debian based operating system users, see Debian and
Derivatives.

For Arch, see Arch AutoKey Installation, and for Gentoo see Gentoo AutoKey
Installation

You can also install AutoKey using Python pip, see pip based installation

If you already have an existing AutoKey installation, it is important to remove it first.

And, before doing so, you may want to backup your configuration
in ~/.config/autokey.

Setting up AutoKey
Once you have AutoKey setup, open it up and you should see the main interface:
As you can see, I already have some AutoKey setup. AutoKey has many features,
including a full scripting interface:

The first thing you will want to do is to setup the preferences. Click Edit >
Preferences. You will be presented with the following window:
We tick the first 3 options to (1) ensure that AutoKey starts on startup, (2) Auto-save
changes and (3) to show a notification icon in the Taskbar, which in Ubuntu presents
itself as follows:

You can use this notification icon to quickly use some items without having to use
keyboard shortcuts, as well as opening the application directly.

Using AutoKey: Keyboard Shortcuts

Ready to setup some keyboard shortcuts? Click the New icon > select Phrase >
provide a name for your new phrase like ‘My Address’ > OK:
Next, we can enter our address:

First enter the address (1), and next select ‘Always prompt before pasting this
phrase’ (2) as you will want to have some form of mouse-based confirmation when
you typed your keyboard shortcut sequence. The reason for this is that you may be
in some application, like your Slack workspace at work, and accidentally type your
key sequence associated with the address.
As this particular sequence has newlines in it (for example after ‘My Name’), when
these keyboard sequences are sent you will have no way to stop them and all text
will be sent to whatever place you are working in. As the newlines confirm (like enter)
messages in many communication tools, your message will be sent (except the last
line) even before you can say ‘whoopsie’ 🙂

Next we also add it as a new option to our notification/taskbar icon by clicking ‘Show
in notification icon menu’ (3) and finally we make sure that we are pasting in by
Keyboard, though you may like to test other options in this field for various text paste
(i.e. insert) scenario’s.

Almost done. Now we need to assign a keyboard sequence/shortcut and for that we
click on ‘Set’ (5) for Abbreviations. We are then presented with the following dialog:

First, click the ‘Add’ button (1). First, type in your preferred keyboard sequence (I
usually use a letter and prefix it by ‘//’ as that is a not-often used keyboard sequence
(unless you’re a programmer who types comments directly after // remark lines
instead of using a space).

In this case we set ‘//m’. Now comes a slightly tricky part due to a minor shortcoming
in the AutoKey GUI. Do not click anywhere else then in the whitespace just under the
newly defined abbreviation. For example, click where the (2) circle is in the
screenshot above. This will lock in the abbreviation / keyboard sequence instead of
removing it again. You will soon get used to it.
Next we want to ensure the ‘Remove typed abbreviation’ is ticked (3) and that we
select ‘Trigger immediately (don’t require a trigger character) (4). Remember how we
mentioned some things are slightly confusing? This is one of them. You can set
trigger characters above and beyond, as a prefix, to keyboard sequences /
abbreviations, but this is often unnecessary and we can enable more simple usage
of AutoKey by selecting this option. Finally, click ‘OK’ (5) to confirm everything.

All done! Now simply open your favorite text editor (yes even vi/vim inside a terminal
will work!) and type your keyboard sequence ‘//m’. If all went well, you should now
see a little ‘My Address’ popup where your mouse cursor is located in that moment,
allowing you to click it and render the text:

If you should see output similar to the following:

Try and change your keyboard ‘Paste using’ method for the Phrase to ‘Clipboard
(Ctrl+V)’ instead:

And you should be all set.

Wrapping up
AutoKey is a great utility which may save you many hours of repetitive typing work.

It does however come with it’s own shortcomings and even issues as discussed.
AutoKey has been around for many years and – with the hope that the current
developers will fix some of the shortcomings – will be around for many productive
years to come! Enjoy!