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Asked: 2026-05-26T21:40:50+00:00

I’m trying to write a little app to capture keystrokes for a window under

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I’m trying to write a little app to capture keystrokes for a window under X and then display them onto the screen using OSD or something. The idea is to use it for screencasts and stuff like that.

I tried some surgery on xev and got it to work fine but then noticed something funny. If I use xev on the window which itself creates, the KEyPress and KeyRelease events are registered and I can see them. However, if I use the -id switch for xev to monitor another window and try to log keystrokes there, they KeyPress and KeyRelease events are not always displayed. I seem to get PropertyNotify events when some things happen but not KeyPress and KeyRelease which are what I’m interested in.

Some windows behave as expected (e.g. gnome-terminal). Some others don’t (e.g. emacs-gtk).

How do I get the keystrokes for these windows?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Key events go to the window that has focus, which is not always the window that appears to have focus. When I try to use xev on my firefox window, key events go to one of its unviewable children (relative upper-left at (-1,-1), size (1,1).

    You can use XGetInputFocus() to find out which window has focus.

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