If you use Xorg you can use XInput2 and XIGrabKeycode[0] to grab specific key combinations and get notified (via event messages, they happen asynchronously) whe

If you use Xorg you can use XInput2 and XIGrabKeycode[0] to grab specific key combinations and get notified (via event messages, they happen asynchronously) when they are pressed. Then you can use XTest and XTestFakeKeyEvent[1] to send the event you want. XInput2 and XIGrabKeycode should provide the highest priority grabbing under Xorg so that even applications that do server-wide grabs (e.g. games) will be bypassed. XTest was meant for automated UI testing but can be used for all sorts of automated behaviors. For the first part i wrote a simple program[2] years a go that uses xkill to kill the toplevel window with Ctrl+Alt+K (mainly for games that grab the input and hang) which can be used as a quick example. I haven't tried to use XTestFakeKeyEvent but there seems to be a lot of code out there which can be used as an example, e.g. this one[2] (see the send_key function near the top). [0] https://linux.die.net/man/3/xigrabkeycode https://linux.die.net/man/3/xigrabkeycode [1] https://linux.die.net/man/3/xtestfakekeyevent https://linux.die.net/man/3/xtestfakekeyevent [2] http://runtimeterror.com/tools/xkeyller/ http://runtimeterror.com/tools/xkeyller/ [3] http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/matchbox-history/plain/matchbox-tests/sendkey.c http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/matchbox-history/plain/...