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SharpHook
SharpHook provides a cross-platform global keyboard and mouse hook, event simulation, and text entry simulation for .NET. It is a wrapper of libuiohook and provides direct access to its features as well as higher-level types to work with it.
Installation
dotnet add package SharpHook
dotnet add package SharpHook.Reactive
Upgrading
A migration guide is available for upgrading between major versions.
Docs
You can find more information (including the API reference) in the docs at https://sharphook.tolik.io. Or if you need a specific version:
- v5.3.8 | v5.3.7 | v5.3.6 | v5.3.5 | v5.3.4 | v5.3.3 | v5.3.2 | v5.3.1 | v5.3.0
- v5.2.3 | v5.2.2 | v5.2.1 | v5.2.0
- v5.1.2 | v5.1.1 | v5.1.0
- v5.0.0
- v4.2.1 | v4.2.0
- v4.1.0
- v4.0.1 | v4.0.0
- v3.1.3 | v3.1.2 | v3.1.1 | v3.1.0
- v3.0.2 | v3.0.1 | v3.0.0
- v2.0.0
- v1.1.0
- v1.0.1 | v1.0.0
Supported Platforms
SharpHook targets .NET 6+, .NET Framework 4.6.2+, and .NET Standard 2.0. The following table describes the availability of SharpHook on various platforms:
<table> <tr> <th></th> <th>Windows</th> <th>macOS</th> <th>Linux</th> </tr> <tr> <th>x86</th> <td>Yes</td> <td>N/A</td> <td>No</td> </tr> <tr> <th>x64</th> <td>Yes</td> <td>Yes</td> <td>Yes</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Arm32</th> <td>No</td> <td>N/A</td> <td>Yes</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Arm64</th> <td>Yes</td> <td>Yes</td> <td>Yes</td> </tr> </table>Platform support notes:
-
Windows 10/11 is supported. Arm32 is not supported since its support was removed in .NET 5.
-
macOS 10.15+ is supported. Mac Catalyst is also supported (13.1+). macOS requires that the accessibility API be enabled for the application if it wants to create a global hook.
-
Linux distributions supported by .NET are supported by SharpHook. Linux on x86 is not supported by .NET itself. Only X11 is supported - Wayland support may be coming, but it's not yet here.
More info on OS support can be found in an article on OS-specific constraints.
Usage
Native Functions of libuiohook
SharpHook exposes the functions of libuiohook in the SharpHook.Native.UioHook
class. The SharpHook.Native
namespace also contains types which represent the data used by libuiohook.
In general, you don't need to use the native methods directly. Instead, use the higher-level interfaces and classes provided by SharpHook. However, you should still read this section to know how the high-level features work under the hood.
UioHook
contains the following methods for working with the global hook:
SetDispatchProc
- sets the function which will be called when an event is raised by libuiohook.Run
- creates a keyboard and mouse global hook and runs it on the current thread, blocking it untilStop
is called.RunKeyboard
- creates a keyboard-only global hook and runs it on the current thread, blocking it untilStop
is called.RunMouse
- creates a mouse-only global hook and runs it on the current thread, blocking it untilStop
is called.Stop
- destroys the global hook.
You have to remember that only one global hook can exist at a time since calling SetDispatchProc
will override the
previously set one.
Additionally, UioHook
contains the PostEvent
method for simulating input events, and the SetLoggerProc
method for
setting the log callback.
SharpHook also provides text entry simulation and UioHook
contains the PostText
method. The text to simulate doesn't
depend on the current keyboard layout. The full range of UTF-16 (including surrogate pairs, e.g. emojis) is supported.
libuiohook also provides functions to get various system properties. The corresponding methods are also present in
UioHook
.
If you want to use the low-level functionality, you don't need to use the UioHook
class directly. Instead you can use
interfaces in the SharpHook.Providers
namespace. The methods in those interfaces are the same as in the UioHook
class. SharpHook.Providers.UioHookProvider
implements all of these interfaces and simply calls the corresponding
methods in UioHook
. This should be done to decouple your code from UioHook
and make testing easier.
Global Hooks
SharpHook provides the IGlobalHook
interface along with two default implementations which you can use to control the
hook and subscribe to its events. Here's a basic usage example:
using SharpHook;
// ...
var hook = new TaskPoolGlobalHook();
hook.HookEnabled += OnHookEnabled; // EventHandler<HookEventArgs>
hook.HookDisabled += OnHookDisabled; // EventHandler<HookEventArgs>
hook.KeyTyped += OnKeyTyped; // EventHandler<KeyboardHookEventArgs>
hook.KeyPressed += OnKeyPressed; // EventHandler<KeyboardHookEventArgs>
hook.KeyReleased += OnKeyReleased; // EventHandler<KeyboardHookEventArgs>
hook.MouseClicked += OnMouseClicked; // EventHandler<MouseHookEventArgs>
hook.MousePressed += OnMousePressed; // EventHandler<MouseHookEventArgs>
hook.MouseReleased += OnMouseReleased; // EventHandler<MouseHookEventArgs>
hook.MouseMoved += OnMouseMoved; // EventHandler<MouseHookEventArgs>
hook.MouseDragged += OnMouseDragged; // EventHandler<MouseHookEventArgs>
hook.MouseWheel += OnMouseWheel; // EventHandler<MouseWheelHookEventArgs>
hook.Run();
// or
await hook.RunAsync();
First, you create the hook, then subscribe to its events, and then run it. The Run
method runs the hook on the current
thread, blocking it. The RunAsync()
method runs the hook on a separate thread and returns a Task
which is finished
when the hook is destroyed. You can subscribe to events after the hook is started.
IGlobalHook
extends IDisposable
. When you call the Dispose
method on a hook, it's destroyed. The contract of
the interface is that once a hook has been destroyed, it cannot be started again - you'll have to create a new instance.
Calling Dispose
when the hook is not running is safe - it just won't do anything (other than marking the instance as
disposed).
Hook events are of type HookEventArgs
or a derived type which contains more info. It's possible to suppress event
propagation by setting the SuppressEvent
property to true
inside the event handler. This must be done synchronously
and is only supported on Windows and macOS. You can check the event time and whether the event is real or simulated with
the EventTime
and IsEventSimulated
properties respectively.
[!IMPORTANT] Always use one instance of
IGlobalHook
at a time in the entire application since they all must use the same static method to set the hook callback for libuiohook, so there may only be one callback at a time. Running a global hook when another global hook is already running will corrupt the internal global state of libuiohook.
You can create a keyboard-only or a mouse-only hook by passing a GlobalHookType
to the hook's constructor. This makes
a difference only on Windows where there are two different global hooks - a keyboard hook and a mouse hook. On macOS and
Linux there is one hook for all events, and this simply enables filtering keyboard or mouse events out on these OSes.
SharpHook provides two implementations of IGlobalHook
:
-
SharpHook.SimpleGlobalHook
runs all of its event handlers on the same thread on which the hook itself runs. This means that the handlers should generally be fast since they will block the hook from handling the events that follow if they run for too long. -
SharpHook.TaskPoolGlobalHook
runs all of its event handlers on other threads inside the default thread pool for tasks. The parallelism level of the handlers can be configured. On backpressure it will queue the remaining handlers. This means that the hook will be able to process all events. This implementation should be preferred toSimpleGlobalHook
except for very simple use-cases. But it has a downside - suppressing event propagation will be ignored since event handlers are run on other threads.
The library also provides the SharpHook.GlobalHookBase
class which you can extend to create your own implementation
of the global hook. It calls the appropriate event handlers, and you only need to implement a strategy for dispatching
the events. It also contains a finalizer which will stop the global hook if this object is not reachable anymore.
Reactive Global Hooks
If you're using Rx.NET, you can use the SharpHook.Reactive package to integrate SharpHook with Rx.NET.
SharpHook.Reactive provides the SharpHook.Reactive.IReactiveGlobalHook
interface along with a default implementation
which you can use to use to control the hook and subscribe to its observables. Here's a basic example:
using SharpHook.Reactive;
// ...
var hook = new SimpleReactiveGlobalHook();
hook.HookEnabled.Subscribe(OnHookEnabled);
hook.HookDisabled.Subscribe(OnHookDisabled);
hook.KeyTyped.Subscribe(OnKeyTyped);
hook.KeyPressed.Subscribe(OnKeyPressed);
hook.KeyReleased.Subscribe(OnKeyReleased);
hook.MouseClicked.Subscribe(OnMouseClicked);
hook.MousePressed.Subscribe(OnMousePressed);
hook.MouseReleased.Subscribe(OnMouseReleased);
hook.MouseMoved
.Throttle(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5))
.Subscribe(OnMouseMoved);
hook.MouseDragged
.Throttle(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5))
.Subscribe(OnMouseDragged);
hook.MouseWheel.Subscribe(OnMouseWheel);
hook.Run();
// or
hook.RunAsync().Subscribe();
Reactive global hooks are basically the same as the default global hooks and the same rules apply to them.
SharpHook.Reactive provides two implementations of IReactiveGlobalHook
:
-
SharpHook.Reactive.SimpleReactiveGlobalHook
. Since we're dealing with observables, it's up to you to decide when and where to handle the events through schedulers. A default scheduler can be specified for all observables. -
SharpHook.Reactive.ReactiveGlobalHookAdapter
adapts anIGlobalHook
toIReactiveGlobalHook
. All subscriptions and changes are propagated to the adapted hook. There is no default adapter fromIReactiveGlobalHook
toIGlobalHook
. A default scheduler can be specified for all observables.
Event Simulation
SharpHook provides the ability to simulate keyboard and mouse events in a cross-platform way as well. Here's a quick example:
using SharpHook;
using SharpHook.Native;
// ...
var simulator = new EventSimulator();
// Press Ctrl+C
simulator.SimulateKeyPress(KeyCode.VcLeftControl);
simulator.SimulateKeyPress(KeyCode.VcC);
// Release Ctrl+C
simulator.SimulateKeyRelease(KeyCode.VcC);
simulator.SimulateKeyRelease(KeyCode.VcLeftControl);
// Press the left mouse button
simulator.SimulateMousePress(MouseButton.Button1);
// Release the left mouse button
simulator.SimulateMouseRelease(MouseButton.Button1);
// Press the left mouse button at (0, 0)
simulator.SimulateMousePress(0, 0, MouseButton.Button1);
// Release the left mouse button at (0, 0)
simulator.SimulateMouseRelease(0, 0, MouseButton.Button1);
// Move the mouse pointer to (0, 0)
simulator.SimulateMouseMovement(0, 0);
// Move the mouse pointer 50 pixels to the right and 100 pixels down
simulator.SimulateMouseMovementRelative(50, 100);
// Scroll the mouse wheel
simulator.SimulateMouseWheel(
rotation: -120,
direction: MouseWheelScrollDirection.Vertical, // Vertical by default
type: MouseWheelScrollType.UnitScroll); // UnitScroll by default
SharpHook provides the IEventSimulator
interface, and the default implementation, EventSimulator
, which calls
UioHook.PostEvent
to simulate the events.
Text Entry Simulation
SharpHook also provides text entry simulation. IEventSimulator
contains the SimulateTextEntry
method which accepts
a string
. The text to simulate doesn't depend on the current keyboard layout. The full range of UTF-16 (including
surrogate pairs, e.g. emojis) is supported.
Logging
libuiohook can log messages throughout its execution. By default the messages are not logged anywhere, but you can get
these logs by using the ILogSource
interface and its default implementation, LogSource
:
using SharpHook.Logging;
// ...
var logSource = LogSource.RegisterOrGet(minLevel: LogLevel.Info);
logSource.MessageLogged += this.OnMessageLogged;
private void OnMessageLogged(object? sender, LogEventArgs e) =>
this.logger.Log(this.AdaptLogLevel(e.LogEntry.Level), e.LogEntry.FullText);
As with global hooks, you should use only one LogSource
object at a time. ILogSource
extends IDisposable
- you
can dispose of a log source to stop receiving libuiohook messages.
An EmptyLogSource
class is also available - this class doesn't listen to the libuiohook logs and can be used instead
of LogSource
in release builds.
SharpHook.Reactive contains the IReactiveLogSource
and ReactiveLogSourceAdapter
so you can use them in a more
reactive way:
using SharpHook.Logging;
using SharpHook.Reactive.Logging;
// ...
var logSource = LogSource.RegisterOrGet(minLevel: LogLevel.Info);
var reactiveLogSource = new ReactiveLogSourceAdapter(logSource);
reactiveLogSource.MessageLogged.Subscribe(this.OnMessageLogged);
Testing
SharpHook provides two classes which make testing easier. They aren't required since mocks can be used instead, but unlike mocks, no setup is required to use these classes.
SharpHook.Testing.TestGlobalHook
provides an implementation of IGlobalHook
and IEventSimulator
which can be used
for testing. When the Run
or RunAsync
method is called, it will dispatch events using the various Simulate
methods
from IEventSimulator
.
If this class is used as an IEventSimulator
in the tested code, then the SimulatedEvents
property can be checked to
see which events were simulated using the test instance.
If an IReactiveGlobalHook
is needed for testing, then ReactiveGlobalHookAdapter
can be used to adapt an instance of
TestGlobalHook
.
If the low-level functionality of SharpHook should be mocked, or mocking should be pushed as far away as possible,
then SharpHook.Testing.TestProvider
can be used. It implements every interface in the SharpHook.Providers
namespace
and as such it can be used instead of a normal low-level functionality provider.
Like TestGlobalHook
, this class can post events using the PostEvent
method and dispatch them if Run
was called.
It also contains the PostedEvents
property.
Building from Source
In order to build this library, you'll first need to get libuiohook binaries. You you can get a nightly build from this repository, or you can build them yourself as instructed in the libuiohook fork that SharpHook uses (not recommended as it's non-trivial, and you should most probably use the same options that the build in this repository uses anyway).
Place the binaries into the appropriate directories in the SharpHook
project, as described in the following table:
With libuiohook in place you can build SharpHook using your usual methods, e.g. with Visual Studio or the dotnet
CLI.
You need .NET 8 to build SharpHook.
Library Status
I will maintain the library to keep up with the releases of libuiohook which uses a rolling release model - every commit
to its 1.3
branch is considered stable. If you've noticed that this library hasn't gotten new commits in some time,
rest assured that it's not abandoned! I'm not giving up on this library any time soon.
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