nativeType

nativeType(keys)

This function simulates user keyboard input using the operating system's facilities, sending keypresses to the currently active window, i.e., to the window with keyboard focus. On Windows, this can be used to interact with native Windows message boxes, for example. The keyboard input will be sent to whatever widget has the keyboard focus. The input is case-sensitive, so nativeType("R") is different from nativeType("r").

This function can also simulate the input of special keys by using their names and enclosing them in angle brackets (<>), and can simulate combinations of keys by separating each key name with a +. Here are some examples:

nativeType("Hello");
nativeType("<Return>");
nativeType("<Alt+F4>");
nativeType("<Alt+Tab>");
nativeType("<Ctrl+c>");

This is valid in JavaScript, Perl, Python, and Ruby.

invoke nativeType "Hello"
invoke nativeType "<Return>"
invoke nativeType "<Alt+F4>"
invoke nativeType "<Alt+Tab>"
invoke nativeType "<Ctrl+c>"

The nativeType function can accept all the normal alphanumeric characters (which are written literally), as well as the following special keys (which must be enclosed in angle brackets): <Alt>, <Ctrl>, <Shift>, <Escape>, <Return>, <Space>, <Backspace>, <Tab>, <Pause>, <PageUp>, <PageDown>, <Home>, <End>, <Left>, <Right>, <Up>, <Down>, <Insert>, <Delete>, <Print>, <NumPad0>, <NumPad1>, <NumPad2>, <NumPad3>, <NumPad4>, <NumPad5>, <NumPad6>, <NumPad7>, <NumPad8>, <NumPad9>, <NumPadMultiply>, <NumPadAdd>, <NumPadSubtract>, <NumPadDivide>, <NumPadDecimal>, <MenuLeft>, <MenuRight>, <Win>, <WinLeft>, <WinRight>, <F1>, <F2>, <F3>, <F4>, <F5>, <F6>, <F7>, <F8>, <F9>, <F10>, <F11>, <F12>, <F13>, <F14>, <F15>, <F16>, <F17>, <F18>, <F19>, <F20>, <F21>, <F22>, <F23>, <F24>, <NumLock>, <ScrollLock>, <CapsLock> and <Command> (macOS only) .

It is usually better to use one of the toolkit-specific type(objectOrName, text) functions.