Sanjibukai
Hello everybody,
I never thought about that but is there a way to have an Elixir app that’s running in the background (might be a CLI put in the background of a terminal or just sitting on a terminal that’s minimized) to catch for keyboard input? Basically for catching shortcuts..
Edit: I just noticed we don’t have here a category for Erlang. Maybe it can be useful to have one alongside the Framework category (though it’s not a framework)
Where Next?
Trending in Discussions
Other Trending Topics
Latest on Elixir Forum
Sponsor Spotlight
Bringing learning, work and compliance together since 1987.
Categories:
Sub Categories:
Forums
Popular Tags
- #ecto
- #liveview
- #troubleshooting
- #learning-elixir
- #library
- #deployment
- #erlang
- #testing
- #genserver
- #mix
- #absinthe
- #remote-other
- #otp
- #plug
- #how-to-question
- #macros
- #postgres
- #elixirconf
- #channels
- #exunit
- #discussion
- #code-sync
- #podcasts
- #javascript
- #onsite
- #dialyzer
- #docker
- #authentication
- #umbrella
- #full-time-contract
- #podcasts-by-brainlid
- #ecto-query
- #ai
- #elixirconf-us
- #blog-post
- #elixir-ls
- #phoenix_html
- #iex
- #graphql
- #genstage
- #websockets
- #supervisor
- #advent-of-code
- #distillery
- #processes
- #api
- #forms
- #hex
- #security
- #metaprogramming
Our Sponsors
Build Elixir applications with speed and confidence.
Supporting innovation across the BEAM ecosystem.
We build reliable cloud platforms for business-critical systems.
Catch errors, track performance, monitor hosts and more.
Elixir, Erlang & BEAM conferences from Code Sync - join us in 2026!
Practical resources that improve the lives of professional developers.
Bringing learning, work and compliance together since 1987.
The deployment platform built for Elixir: PaaS ease, VPS control.
The team behind Membrane, Popcorn, LiveDebugger. Available for hire.
Courses that'll move you from confusion to "Aha, now I get it!"
Showing Posts 1 to 2- Show Best Posts
- Show All (oldest first)
- Show All (newest first)
zevv
This is a highly platform-specific job, the method you need for “scraping” keyboard events depends on your operating system, desktop environment, etc. On linux you could read and parse raw events from
/dev/input/*, which could be done with just elixir. For other solutions you’ll have to bind to native OS libraries; for example, on an X11 desktop you’d need something like the libxtst extension, on windows youll need to useSetWindowsHookEx(), orCGEventTapCreate()on mac os.tommica
There are the forums for Erlang: https://erlangforums.com/