Controlling the mouse¶
Use pynput.mouse.Controller
like this:
from pynput.mouse import Button, Controller
mouse = Controller()
# Read pointer position
print('The current pointer position is {0}'.format(
mouse.position))
# Set pointer position
mouse.position = (10, 20)
print('Now we have moved it to {0}'.format(
mouse.position))
# Move pointer relative to current position
mouse.move(5, -5)
# Press and release
mouse.press(Button.left)
mouse.release(Button.left)
# Double click; this is different from pressing and releasing
# twice on Mac OSX
mouse.click(Button.left, 2)
# Scroll two steps down
mouse.scroll(0, 2)
Monitoring the mouse¶
Use pynput.mouse.Listener
like this:
from pynput import mouse
def on_move(x, y):
print('Pointer moved to {0}'.format(
(x, y)))
def on_click(x, y, button, pressed):
print('{0} at {1}'.format(
'Pressed' if pressed else 'Released',
(x, y)))
if not pressed:
# Stop listener
return False
def on_scroll(x, y, dx, dy):
print('Scrolled {0} at {1}'.format(
'down' if dy < 0 else 'up',
(x, y)))
# Collect events until released
with mouse.Listener(
on_move=on_move,
on_click=on_click,
on_scroll=on_scroll) as listener:
listener.join()
# ...or, in a non-blocking fashion:
listener = mouse.Listener(
on_move=on_move,
on_click=on_click,
on_scroll=on_scroll)
listener.start()
A mouse listener is a threading.Thread
, and all callbacks will be invoked
from the thread.
Call pynput.mouse.Listener.stop
from anywhere, raise StopException
or
return False
from a callback to stop the listener.
When using the non-blocking version above, the current thread will continue executing. This might be necessary when integrating with other GUI frameworks that incorporate a main-loop, but when run from a script, this will cause the program to terminate immediately.
The mouse listener thread¶
The listener callbacks are invoked directly from an operating thread on some platforms, notably Windows.
This means that long running procedures and blocking operations should not be invoked from the callback, as this risks freezing input for all processes.
A possible workaround is to just dispatch incoming messages to a queue, and let a separate thread handle them.
Handling mouse listener errors¶
If a callback handler raises an exception, the listener will be stopped. Since callbacks run in a dedicated thread, the exceptions will not automatically be reraised.
To be notified about callback errors, call Thread.join
on the listener
instance:
from pynput import mouse
class MyException(Exception): pass
def on_click(x, y, button, pressed):
if button == mouse.Button.left:
raise MyException(button)
# Collect events until released
with mouse.Listener(
on_click=on_click) as listener:
try:
listener.join()
except MyException as e:
print('{0} was clicked'.format(e.args[0]))
Toggling event listening for the mouse listener¶
Once pynput.mouse.Listener.stop
has been called, the listener cannot be
restarted, since listeners are instances of threading.Thread
.
If your application requires toggling listening events, you must either add an internal flag to ignore events when not required, or create a new listener when resuming listening.
Synchronous event listening for the mouse listener¶
To simplify scripting, synchronous event listening is supported through the
utility class pynput.mouse.Events
. This class supports reading single
events in a non-blocking fashion, as well as iterating over all events.
To read a single event, use the following code:
from pynput import mouse
# The event listener will be running in this block
with mouse.Events() as events:
# Block at most one second
event = events.get(1.0)
if event is None:
print('You did not interact with the mouse within one second')
else:
print('Received event {}'.format(event))
To iterate over mouse events, use the following code:
from pynput import mouse
# The event listener will be running in this block
with mouse.Events() as events:
for event in events:
if event.button == mouse.Button.right:
break
else:
print('Received event {}'.format(event))
Please note that the iterator method does not support non-blocking operation, so it will wait for at least one mouse event.
The events will be instances of the inner classes found in
pynput.mouse.Events
.
Ensuring consistent coordinates between listener and controller on Windows¶
Recent versions of _Windows_ support running legacy applications scaled when the system scaling has been increased beyond 100%. This allows old applications to scale, albeit with a blurry look, and avoids tiny, unusable user interfaces.
This scaling is unfortunately inconsistently applied to a mouse listener and a controller: the listener will receive physical coordinates, but the controller has to work with scaled coordinates.
This can be worked around by telling Windows that your application is DPI aware. This is a process global setting, so _pynput_ cannot do it automatically. Do enable DPI awareness, run the following code:
import ctypes
PROCESS_PER_MONITOR_DPI_AWARE = 2
ctypes.windll.shcore.SetProcessDpiAwareness(PROCESS_PER_MONITOR_DPI_AWARE)