Running Autokey on Chromebook

[Lars Shirey]

Newbie here. I've installed Linux beta that came with my Chromebook. Downloaded the deb version of Autokey and installed successfully according to completion window. However, it's not showing up anywhere in my Launcher Linux folder or anywhere else. 
How can I find and run the application. Do I need to use terminal and if so, what commands would I type.

Thanks in advance.

[Keith Bainbridge]

> --




God Morning Lars, and welcome.


Autokey would normally be added to the menu, but I don't know which
desktop you have to guide you further.

You could try the terminal. type:
autokey &
should get you started.

Did your package manager install autokey-common as well?

First thing to do is give the example shortcuts a trigger key. Then try
them in a chrome app, or just the search bar, to see if linux is
integrated with chrome OS - or are you dual booting? in which case the
integration question is irrelevant.


Now a couple of questions about your system. Was there any detail about
which 'Linux beta' they gave you to install? Is chrome still your desktop?

More to the point, how familiar are you with linux? The output of
uname -a
will answer the question about your system.



--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1tho...@gmx.com

[Lars Shirey]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for your quick reply. 

Regrettably, I've only dabbled with Unix but now need to get much more educated as I'm using my Acer Chromebook Spin 311 much more than my Windows laptop for most of my day to day needs, only using my Dell laptop for the heavy lifting work i.e. graphic/video editing, etc.

That said, in answer to some of your questions ...

The version of Linux installed on my Chromebook is: Linux penguin 5.4.67-09356-gf3ed4c0c4a31 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Sep 27 20:35:52 PDT 2020 x86_64 GNU/Linux
The version of Autokey installed is: autokey-common_0.95.10-0_all.deb

The installation appeared to be successful but as stated, can't either in the Linux Apps folder where all the other Linux apps icons automatically got added or by searching for in on my system.
I tried your recommendation "You could try the terminal. type:

autokey &
should get you started."

Just got an error message.
What might I try to do next?

Thanks again

[Joe]

You seem to have the AutoKey common package installed, but you also need
one of the front ends installed: autokey-gtk or autokey-qt.

See if one of them is already installed. At a terminal, run

which autokey-gtk
which autokey-qt

and see if this finds either of them.

If not:

Either get one of them using your package manager or uninstall
autokey-common and follow these instructions.

https://github.com/autokey/autokey/wiki/Installing#debian-and-derivatives

If you don't know which front end to install, choose autokey-gtk, it's
more likely that the dependencies it requires are already installed on
your system.

Once you have the packages properly installed, they should show up in
your launcher menu. If they don't, that should be easy to fix manually.

Then, we can setup AutoKey to start when you login if you want to have
it automatically available.

Joe

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[Christopher Woolley]

Joe I was going to say the same thing, I had a similar issue but not on a Chromebook, autokey-gtk is the command and be sure to add that to the auto start on boot too. 

[Christopher Woolley]

I would like to add Autokey is a game-changer if you can grasp it overall capabilities. It has accelerated my workflow in a huge way and I'm using some remedial Python scripts to further augment everything. I do a lot of SEO and it works wonders with keyword sets, hashtags, URLs along with every other repetitive task you might do. Be sure to make a separate folder for all your saved scripts, phrases, etc., and back it up online or package it with git or docker. Makes things easy to restore if your computer crashes. Good luck all and autokey rocks as I used to use Typeitin but I refuse to use Windows OS anymore. 

[Lars Shirey]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the recommendations. I installed autokey-gtk and it seemed to install without error. The Autokey icon appeared in the Linux apps folder. However, when I clicked on the icon, for a brief second, in the desktop shelf the app appeared to be starting with a spinning wheel but then disappeared and no front end or anything else happened.
So, I seem to be getting closer but still a no go. Any further recommendations to troubleshoot this or, more likely, educate me on how to properly install Linux apps for Chromebook ;-) 

P.S. I've installed quite a few other popular Linux apps using the package installer that comes with the included version of Linux without issue. I just download the .deb distro (must be .deb), double tap the file and select the "Install with Linux (beta)" from the dropdown window. An install window pops up with program details and once I select install all works as expected. Regrettably, not quite as easy with Autokey :-( 

[Lars Shirey]

Christoper, I too agree that Autokey could be a game-changer for me as well. I was a big user of AutoHotKey for Windows yet like you I'm using Windows less and less these days. Now if I can just get Autokey to be fully functional on my Chromebook, I'll be a very happy camper :-)

[Joe]

Nope. But, something hinky is going on.

Debian testing is where (almost) all Debian derivative distros get
AutoKey from, so that should be OK.

But, if he installed autokey-common, it should have either failed to
install or somehow pulled in one of the front ends as a dependency.

And, if it did pull in a front end, it should have integrated that with
his desktop/menu.

AFAIK, we don't do anything that is kernel version dependent. I'm on
4.15 and have used AutoKey with many much older kernels.

If he does have a front end installed, then we just have to find it and
add it to his menu.

Once we do that, it should either run or throw an exception... We'll run
it from a terminal first, so we can see anything it complains about.

Joe

On 1/21/21 10:18 PM, Keith Bainbridge wrote:

> On 22/1/21 11:38 am, Joe wrote:
>> The version of Linux installed on my Chromebook is: Linux penguin
>> 5.4.67-09356-gf3ed4c0c4a31 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Sep 27 20:35:52 PDT 2020
>> x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
>

> G'day Joe
>
> Have you had any experience with chromeOS?   I haven't. I'm a little
> concerned that autokey will work in linux but not chrome, which is why I
> suggested he try one of the samples in a browser before proceeding.
>
> That version of linux may be google specific.   Last I heard they run
> the internet on debian testing.
>
>
> It's not overly relevant but Lars' system needs an update. kernel 5.4
> suggests debian stable but others may have stuck with 5.4 as well. The
> linux kernel archives show 5.4.91 was released 19Jan.
>
>
> --
> Keith Bainbridge
>
> ke1tho...@gmx.com

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Lars Shirey wrote:

>I installed autokey-gtk and it seemed to install without error. The
>Autokey icon appeared in the Linux apps folder. However, when I
>clicked on the icon, for a brief second, in the desktop shelf the
>app appeared to be starting with a spinning wheel but then
>disappeared and no front end or anything else happened. So, I seem
>to be getting closer but still a no go.

This command should cause AutoKey to appear as a shortcut in your
system tray, but it won't open AutoKey in a window:

autokey-gtk

This command should cause AutoKey to apper as a shortcut in your
system tray and open its configuration (main) window:

autokey-gtk -c

Note that the shortcut in your system tray may be difficult to spot
depending on how you've styled your desktop. You should see an
upper-case A in your tray. If you left-click that, you can choose to
"Show Main Window" to open up the configuration window. Once you've
got AutoKey up and running, you can edit its preferences and choose
the Light or Dark theme for the Notification icon so that it shows up
the way you'd like it to.

--
Little Girl

There is no spoon.

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 22/1/21 7:52 pm, Lars Shirey wrote:
> However, when I clicked on the icon, for a brief second, in the desktop
> shelf the app appeared to be starting with a spinning wheel but then
> disappeared and no front end or anything else happened.

So, Lars, what happens if you start autokey in command mode using:
autokey -l


It hasn't happened for several years, but I used have to reboot to get
autokey to run. No other linux apps, just autokey.


Must say that if I can add basic linux apps to chromeOS, it is sounding
more interesting. Better try it in vbox again, so I can try it
seriously. It hasn't worked previously.

--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1tho...@gmx.com

[Joe]

OK. That's progress!

Probably your installer uses dpkg instead of apt, so it doesn't check
for dependencies.

When any GUI program misbehaves, the first thing to do is to open a
terminal and launch it from there. Most GUI programs put out informative
and error messages to the terminal anyway, but they get discarded when
you run them directly from the GUI/launcher.

Run

autokey-gtk &

from a terminal and tell us what it says. The "&" is so that it won't
lock up your terminal while AutoKey is running.

----

In general, if you're directly installing debs, it's much better to do
it from the command line (CLI) in a terminal because you can see what it
does.

the command is

sudo dpkg -i whatever.deb ...

(replacing whatever.deb ... with the list of debs you want to install.)

You probably also have the apt front end installed.

After you install debs using dpkg, it never hurts to run

sudo apt-get install -f

This looks over your packages and tries to fix any loose ends like
missing dependencies, partially installed packages or package conflicts.

Joe

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[Joe]

Also, when AutoKey launches, by default it goes into the background and
doesn't display the main menu. There's a bug in there somewhere such
that left clicking on the panel icon doesn't open the main menu with the
GTK front end.

Try right clicking on the panel icon. This should open a context menu.
In that menu, there should be a show main window option. Click on that
and see if the main menu is displayed. If it is, then everything may be
working fine and you can try running some of the preinstalled example
scripts and phrases.

Joe

On 1/22/21 3:52 AM, Lars Shirey wrote:

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/autokey-users/07eaca8c-0f4a-4595-8998-50981c1a4ffbn%40googlegroups.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/autokey-users/07eaca8c-0f4a-4595-8998-50981c1a4ffbn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Lars Shirey]

Hi Joe,

Ran "autokey-gtk &" from the terminal and got the attached error msg so sharing without trying anything further yet. Let me know what you think.

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Lars Shirey wrote:

>I installed autokey-gtk and it seemed to install without error. The
>Autokey icon appeared in the Linux apps folder. However, when I
>clicked on the icon, for a brief second, in the desktop shelf the
>app appeared to be starting with a spinning wheel but then
>disappeared and no front end or anything else happened. So, I seem
>to be getting closer but still a no go. Any further recommendations
>to troubleshoot this or, more likely, educate me on how to properly
>install Linux apps for Chromebook ;-)

I've done a bit more research on this and I suspect the Linux(Beta)
app that you're using to provide a Linux container isn't providing a
complete enough environment to make AutoKey behave as expected.

The Linux(Beta) app is described in detail in this YouTube video by
Eevnos and he makes it pretty clear that this isn't a full-blown Linux
installation and that he doesn't have full access to the system the
way we do on our computers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obwMeK_jNmA

An alternative that will probably work better is to use the Crouton
app instead. Crouton lets you install a full-blown Linux distribution
alongside ChromeOS and freely toggle between the two. Eevos
demonstrates the installation and use of Crouton in this YouTube
video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB9puwi2qTo).

Ubuntu also offers a tutorial on the installation and use of Crouton:

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-on-chromebook#1-overview

[Barnaby Fredric]

I can confirm I have gotten it running on crouton. Lars may I ask what your use case is for AutoKey in ChromeOS? As far as I know even if you get it running in crostini (Linux in ChromeOS) it won't be able to interact with other apps. Disclaimer: I haven't actually tried it on crostini as I tend to use crouton and just switch between Linux and ChromeOS .

I guess I would also check to make sure you have python3 installed as I'm pretty sure it needs this to run.

[Lars Shirey]

Hi, Thanks for the reply. 

Chromebook is my primary device for daily work. I use my Dell for heavy lifting i.e. graphic design, video editing, etc. My primary forms of communications are text & email. That's where I have a lot of repetitive text. I'm also a writer so template blocks are also used a lot. While I have a good text expander extension that handles most of my needs while working via my Chrome browser, I also use Linix apps installed on my Chromebook where I also have need to past a lot of repetitive text blocks & templates i.e. Roam Research, notes in Kindle, templates in my text editor, etc. All of which my text expander chrome extension can't handle.

Hope the above answered your use case question.

I'll check to see if python3 is installed. Thanks

[Lars Shirey]

Thanks Little Girl. I'll try Crouton.

[jack]

I haven't been following this thread, so just as m an aside..

A few days ago i came across espanso, which is a dedicated text expansion program. Worked well in the brief test i tried.

Might work for you?

https://espanso.org/

Jack

[Johnny Rosenberg]

Den lör 23 jan. 2021 kl 05:16 skrev Lars Shirey <lars....@totalbalance.us>:

Hi Joe,

Ran "autokey-gtk &" from the terminal and got the attached error msg so sharing without trying anything further yet. Let me know what you think.

It's supposed to be autokey-gtk, NOT autokey -gtk. No space, it's one command. However, if you add the -l option, a space will be required, of course: autokey-gtk -l.

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

 

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[Lars Shirey]

Thanks fo the comment Johnny. I also got the same result without the space.

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[Joe]

This is pretty weird.

I tried running that command on my system (with AutoKey not running) and
I get

bigbird@sananda:~/installs/autokey/autokey$ autokey -gtk &
[1] 6824
bigbird@sananda:~/installs/autokey/autokey$ usage: autokey [-h] [-l] [-c]
autokey: error: unrecognized arguments: -gtk

I looked and there doesn't seem to be a reference to pkg_resources in
the AutoKey source code.

bigbird@sananda:~/installs/autokey/autokey$ ls -l /usr/bin/autokey
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Feb  8  2019 /usr/bin/autokey ->
/etc/alternatives/autokey
bigbird@sananda:~/installs/autokey/autokey$ ls -l /etc/alternatives/autokey
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Feb  8  2019 /etc/alternatives/autokey ->
/usr/bin/autokey-qt

So, on a properly installed system, autokey points indirectly to one of
the front ends.

I'm not good at Python, but an error message like Lars is getting looks
like /usr/bin/autokey isn't pointing to where it should be.

This looks like the setup-tools module is incorrectly installed and
that's outside of the AutoKey package and should be part of the larger
system configuration.

This thing looks like the glue between python and Linux.

I searched on python linux no modules named pkg_resources.

This sounds like a job for people who support/build Python applications
for Linux on Chromebooks. I don't know where they live, but it's not in
our project.

Joe

On 2/1/21 4:46 PM, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> Den lör 23 jan. 2021 kl 05:16 skrev Lars Shirey

> <lars....@totalbalance.us <mailto:lars....@totalbalance.us>>:

>
> Hi Joe,
> Ran "autokey-gtk &" from the terminal and got the attached error
> msg so sharing without trying anything further yet. Let me know
> what you think.
>

> Screenshot 2021-01-22 at 9.05.36 PM.png
>
>

> It's supposed to be _*autokey-gtk*_, NOT _*autokey -gtk*_. No space,
> it's one command. However, if you add the _*-l*_ option, a space will
> be required, of course: _*autokey-gtk -l*_*.*
> *
> *
> *
> *

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>
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[Lars Shirey]

Well, I seem to be closer to having AutoKey work on my Chromebook. I hadn't installed Gnome yet so I did and then re-installed autokey and both autokey-gtk and -gt. It showed up as one of my installed apps on Gnome so I launched it from there. Low and behold the gt GUI popped up :-)
Regrettably, I'm unable to launch any of the scripts. I created a simple "test" script and also tried the sample Address script with the abbreviation "adr" followed by tab and nothing happened. Tried other non-words e.g. ctrl, space, those didn't work either.
Attached is a screenshot of the GUI.
Suggestions?

[Joe]

Try creating a new script with nothing in it just so the script editor
panel is open. Click on the panel to give it the active focus and then
type the trigger abbreviation for another phrase/script and see if it
puts the expected results it the panel.

You could also test by opening an existing script for editing, clicking
on the edit panel and then launch it from within the AutoKey Main menu
using the Run Script button and see if that works. (Don't save the
results. This is just to see if it runs.)

These tests more or less stay within AutoKey itself and might run into
less brick walls. Depending on what these tests do, we might then need a
trace to see if it tells us anything useful.

Joe

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[Lars Shirey]

OK. Tried your test and triggering address with "adr" within the script edit o a new script WORKED :-).
Still doesn't work outside of Autokey.
What shall I try next?

[Lars Shirey]

*within the script editor of a new script and it WORKED

[Joe]

Create a normal phrase (text only with no <...> macro's in it) to be
shown in your panel context menu, have a trigger abbreviation and an
assigned hotkey and save it. Make sure  that the phrase you choose is
not a valid Linux/bash command that can do anything! "# this is a test"
triggered by "mytest!" and a hotkey of "alt+1" should be pretty safe.

run the phrase by right clicking on your panel icon and selecting the
phrase from the context menu.

The text should appear on the terminal command line (CLI)

If that works, run the phrase by typing its trigger abbreviation on the CLI.

If that works, run the phrase by typing its hotkey.

As soon as one of these steps fails, stop testing and

Kill AutoKey and wait a minute or two (or until pgrep autokey comes up
empty). You can close it from the main menu or pkill autokey at the CLI.

Start a trace from a terminal, e.g.

autokey-gtk --verbose &

run the test again that failed

pkill autokey

to stop AutoKey

select all the tracing output  (with mouse or left click at one end and
shift left click at the other end) and copy (Ctrl+shift+c) and paste it
into an email to send here.

Hopefully, the trace will tell us something.

If you're not running "real" Linux, some or all of your apps may be
running in containers designed to keep them from communicating with each
other. That's an Android thing. I don't know how to get around that.

Joe

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