sneakysnek

sneakysnek is a minimalistic, cross-platform global input capture solution for Python 3.6+. While there are certainly already offerings in terms of input libraries, they generally focus more on sending input, with capturing only being an afterthought. sneakysnek is dead simple in both its design and how you end up using it. You will be up and running in less than 5 lines of code and will start receiving lean & universal events on all 3 supported platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS).

This library was built with the goal of powering the Gameplay Recording feature in the Serpent.AI Framework where keyboard & mouse inputs are collected alongside frame sequences to build machine learning datasets.

Feel free to study the code to learn more about input capturing and use it responsibly!

Installation

pip install sneakysnek

Zero dependencies on Windows. Will install pyobjc-framework-Quartz on macOS and python-xlib on Linux.

Demo

Once installed in your Python environment, you can take it for a quick spin to test it on your platform. Just run sneakysnek.

Usage

Using sneakysnek is ridiculously simple:

from sneakysnek.recorder import Recorder

recorder = Recorder.record(print)  # Replace print with any callback that accepts an 'event' arg
# Some blocking code in your main thread...

sneakysnek runs its capturing and callbacks in separate threads. It should not leave anything behind in most cases. For optimal cleanliness, run recorder.stop() from your main thread when you are done recording.

Events

The callback you provide your recorder with will receive one of the following 2 event objects:

KeyboardEvent

Represents an event captured from the keyboard.

Attributes

• event: One of KeyboardEvents.DOWN, KeyboardEvents.UP
• keyboard_key: One entry from the KeyboardKey enumeration
• timestamp: A time.time() timestamp

MouseEvent

Represents an event captured from the mouse.

Attributes

• event: One of MouseEvents.CLICK. MouseEvents.SCROLL, MouseEvents.MOVE
• button: One entry from the MouseButton enumeration
• direction: One of "DOWN", "UP"
• velocity: An integer representing the velocity of scroll events (only >1 on macOS)
• x: An integer representing the x coordinate of the mouse position
• y: An integer representing the y coordinate of the mouse position
• timestamp: A time.time() timestamp

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• Learn more about the Serpent.AI Python Framework - Website - Blog - Repo
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