I understand the app is only installable on Windows, but what is the thinking behind not allowing downloads on non-Windows devices? I was going to save a copy of the installer to my Google Drive from my phone and the download button doesn't work. Seems like an odd choice that could hinder adoption.
(This is partially an assumption on my part as I currently don't have an unrestricted Windows machine to verify, but considering the non-functional button and "download on Windows" message it displays it seemed safe to assume)
Slightly related. On wayland based linux desktops this would never work because an app is not allowed to hijack the mouse pointer to dispatch events. I believe only the compositor is allowed to do that.
I know, because I wanted to automate a GUI task using PyAutoGUI and it wouldnt work on wayland no matter what.
Actual problem on Wayland is that it often doesn't work when you are trying to click somewhere in the menu - for the mouse clicking app to read keyboard input, it must take focus away from the app where the click should go. And some toolkits just close menus on focus loss.
I personally use wl-kbptr, and the problem above is the only one that can't be solved without explicit support from the compositor.
My problem with these types of apps will always be that most software it interacts with will unfortunately be designed without accessibility in mind.
I've trialed a handful of these mouse-less programs before and I always run into the same hurdles.
E.g. where one or more of my apps have sliders which I can't interact with using clicks instead of drags (so I can't interact with it at all), or needing to click things like my MacOS dock, or even resize a window.
Hello, I'm the developer behind Neverclick. Neverclick doesn't use accessibility apis. It uses local computer vision so it works in every app.
I've had a poor experience with accessibility apis, they're clunky, slow, and unpredictable, and as you said many apps aren't built with accessibility in mind. With computer vision you don't have to worry about that.
This might sound strange, but the cv system in Neverclick actually runs significantly faster than UI Automation (which is the accessibility api on windows) in nearly all of my personal tests. I can't believe that accessibility apis are so poorly optimized that raw pixel analysis is faster lol. Also, I have users that use Neverclick on 10 year old hardware and they tell me that the cv runs instantly whereas UI Automation is super laggy for them.
Also, accessibility apis typically don't give you useful bounding boxes for text in text editors, this is another advantage of the cv approach.
I really wish the title of the post was "Desktop application for performing mouse actions with your keyboard using computer vision" so that it's more obvious that it uses cv, although it's my fault since the current title is how I have it in the readme and they probably just copied that.
I bought an iBook G3 specifically for running Debian back in the early 2000s. It worked absolutely perfectly and one of the huge features I miss was that the small option key to the right of the space bar was converted to a middle mouse button :)
This is really nice, great job! I built something similar for myself on MacOS recently. Started off as a window manager then began adding keyboard navigation features as I was unhappy with other tools (vimium, shortcat etc).
Hint mode as a feature being able to click all active links on the screen is great and very useful.
Two features I've added recently that have made never using a mouse much more feasible:
1. Search mode - Search for any text on the page, jump to it and then use vim keybindings to select text from there and copy => I use this 20+ times a day
2. Scroll mode - Any scroll area on the page is highlighted with a hint, but when selected it clicks the scroll area and allows you to use keybindings like j/k/gg/G to scroll up and down. I loved this from vimium and wanted to everywhere
This looks cool! How is the planned Linux support (the website says "Coming soon for Linux") suppose to work? X11 only? Wayland? Gnome only (or any other DE)?
I am guessing wp_pointer_warp_v1 in Wayland, but not sure if all compositors support that. And that is just for moving the cursor. Can we "send" a wl_pointer click like that?
Most software in this space relies on accessibility apis, which means it only works in apps that have accessibility support. Neverclick uses computer vision. There are several advantages to using computer vision, the biggest one is that it works in every app. It also produces really good bounding boxes around text so it's great for editing text. And counterintuitively, it runs significantly faster than the traditional accessibility api approach. The hints show up instantaneously, even on old hardware.
thanks for the heads up, I have a keychron gathering dust at home, so I'll test this later on. favved the thread anyway, since I'm interested, but will wait for the macOS version.
(This is partially an assumption on my part as I currently don't have an unrestricted Windows machine to verify, but considering the non-functional button and "download on Windows" message it displays it seemed safe to assume)
I know, because I wanted to automate a GUI task using PyAutoGUI and it wouldnt work on wayland no matter what.
I personally use wl-kbptr, and the problem above is the only one that can't be solved without explicit support from the compositor.
https://mouseless.click/
I've trialed a handful of these mouse-less programs before and I always run into the same hurdles.
E.g. where one or more of my apps have sliders which I can't interact with using clicks instead of drags (so I can't interact with it at all), or needing to click things like my MacOS dock, or even resize a window.
I've had a poor experience with accessibility apis, they're clunky, slow, and unpredictable, and as you said many apps aren't built with accessibility in mind. With computer vision you don't have to worry about that.
This might sound strange, but the cv system in Neverclick actually runs significantly faster than UI Automation (which is the accessibility api on windows) in nearly all of my personal tests. I can't believe that accessibility apis are so poorly optimized that raw pixel analysis is faster lol. Also, I have users that use Neverclick on 10 year old hardware and they tell me that the cv runs instantly whereas UI Automation is super laggy for them.
Also, accessibility apis typically don't give you useful bounding boxes for text in text editors, this is another advantage of the cv approach.
I really wish the title of the post was "Desktop application for performing mouse actions with your keyboard using computer vision" so that it's more obvious that it uses cv, although it's my fault since the current title is how I have it in the readme and they probably just copied that.
Hint mode as a feature being able to click all active links on the screen is great and very useful.
Two features I've added recently that have made never using a mouse much more feasible:
1. Search mode - Search for any text on the page, jump to it and then use vim keybindings to select text from there and copy => I use this 20+ times a day
2. Scroll mode - Any scroll area on the page is highlighted with a hint, but when selected it clicks the scroll area and allows you to use keybindings like j/k/gg/G to scroll up and down. I loved this from vimium and wanted to everywhere
Feel free to steal those :)
https://github.com/andyhmltn/nflow
Github has no source code.
Pass for me.