Type Away

Use your smartphone to type any text (including chinese!) to your PC.

This is a server which enables remote devices to input UTF-8 text to desktop applications as if it were typed from the local keyboard.

A use case would be to directly use a smartphone as a remote handwriting pad to write chinese/japanese characters. It also works well as voice input method if the device supports it.

How it works

Clients use Socket.IO to send text input to the server, which in turn write the text using either:

• xdotool (Linux only): simulate keyboard input
• or the system clipboard + paste command (Ctrl/Cmd + V) on Windows and Mac (the latter is untested)

On Linux, you can force the clipboard mode by setting the env variable TA_USE_CLIPBOARD=true.

Requirements

• node

And:

• on Linux:
  • xdotool
• on Windows and Mac (or with env variable TA_USE_CLIPBOARD=true on Linux)
  • Java 8+ (used for sending paste command)

Installation

npm install --global type-away

on Linux:

sudo apt-get install xdotool

on Windows and Mac: install Java (version 8 or above)

Usage

• Launch the server:

  type-away

• It will output something like:

  Listening on http://192.168.0.15:3000

• From a remote device (smartphone), open a browser and navigate to the given url

• Input your text into the webpage

• The text is now written to the focused application.

License

MIT