Linux: emulate mouse clicks with keyboard

Question

How can I emulate a mouse click on a keyboard on linux, e.g. by defining that my right CTRL-key should behave as if I clicked the right mouse button?

Answer 1

There is a "use numeric keypad as mouse" option for both kde and gnome. In kde 4.4 it's located under system settings -> Mouse -> Mouse navigation. I think that it's under accessability settings in gnome. The click actions appears on the keys around the numpad - the "+" key is right click and the "5" key is left click in kde.

If you don't run kde/gnome or want to use a more configurable solution, some sort of combination of these two programs should work:

http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/xdo.html

http://www.nongnu.org/xbindkeys/xbindkeys.html

Use xbindkeys to bind a keypress to

   echo "click 3" | xdo

in order to get a right click.

Answer 2

You can create shortcuts in Keyboard > Custom Shortcuts and add the xdotool commands. For example:

Super + Z -> xdotool click 1 # left click
Super + X -> xdotool click 2 # middle click
Super + C -> xdotool click 3 # right click

Answer 3

In CentOS 6.4 it's here:

System Menu --> Preferences --> Keyboard --> Mouse Clicks (tab) --> Enable the Keyboard to Emulate the Mouse (checkbox)

Now use the keypad '5' to left click (the other keypad numbers move the mouse).

Mouse Preferences (linuxtopia.org)