Question

I’ve been playing with the Robot class recently and I have it doing what I want, but I haven’t figured out how to interrupt/stop its actions via user input.

For example: I want it to click the desktop a hundred times but I decide forty clicks in that I want to make it quit (or pause).

I’d like to be able to do something simple like press a certain key or press the middle mouse button in order to tell it to stop. In order to do this, it must be able to listen for input outside of the Java application, since the actions the Robot is performing are in other programs.

Answer 1

You may be able to use some of the code from this answer:
Simulate a key held down in Java

And then add a Listener to whatever action, component, whatever to call the stop method on the robot command.

Does that provide you with some inspiration?

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Edit After further discussion the real question is:

How to respond to external Mouse Events (Outside the Java Application) inside a Java application?

It Seems that you can’t without native code and Mouse Hooks as it’s OS Dependent.

For Further Discussion see Is it possible to have a MouseMotionListener listen to all system mouse motion events?