type-away v0.0.4
Type Away
Use your smartphone to type any text (including chinese!) to your PC.
This is a server which enables remote devices to input UTF-8 text to desktop applications as if it were typed from the local keyboard.
A use case would be to directly use a smartphone as a remote handwriting pad to write chinese/japanese characters. It also works well as voice input method if the device supports it.
How it works
Clients use Socket.IO to send text input to the server, which in turn write the text using either:
xdotool
(Linux only): simulate keyboard input- or the system clipboard + paste command (
Ctrl/Cmd
+V
) on Windows and Mac (the latter is untested)
On Linux, you can force the clipboard mode by setting the env variable TA_USE_CLIPBOARD
(this still uses xdotool
for the paste command).
Requirements
- node
And:
- on Linux:
- xdotool
- on Windows or Mac:
- nothing special (uses PowerShell / AppleScript)
Installation
npm install --global type-away
Then:
on Linux:
sudo apt-get install xdotool
Usage
Launch the server:
type-away
It will output something like:
Listening on http://192.168.0.15:3000
From a remote device (smartphone), open a browser and navigate to the given url (or scan the QR code)
Input your text into the webpage
The text is now written to the focused application.
Build
If building on Windows, set shell to Git Bash for npm scripts:
npm config set script-shell "C:\\Program Files\\git\\bin\\bash.exe"
License
MIT