I recently downloaded the latest and greatest Raspbian OS for my PI, enabled hide function on taskbar and have installed xdotool. For what I want to use PI for, I need to have the taskbar hidden at all time even at Boot. Apparently, the latest Raspbian automatically moves the mouse pointer to startup or start button at boot. That enables the taskbar visibility. So, to avoid this I want to be able to move the mouse pointer away from the taskbar completely as soon as it boots. I have looked around on the Internet for answer, but I can't get anything working. I have tested the command I want to run on the terminal and it works as it should.
First I tried Crontab: @reboot xdotool mousemove 300 250
absolutely it does NOTHING at boot.
Second I tried rc.local: xdotool mousemove 300 250
it did nothing either.
Third I put this command into a script file and tried to execute the script at reboot. It didn't work either.
So, I am confused. Can someone please help me?
6 Answers 6
The file /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart includes the line @point-rpi
Description for point-rpi is:
Locate the mouse pointer over the menu button
This tool determines the current location of the menu button on the taskbar, and positions the mouse pointer over it, to trigger the hover behaviour (button highlight and tooltip).
Presumably, if you remove that line it will no longer position the cursor on the taskbar.
No need to install xdotool or whatever. go to:
/home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostartand comment out the line
@point-rpiand remember, it will hide/center the mouse pointer, not move it.
The path has changed as of Nov 2018 for the RPi. You can now find it here : /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
No need to install xdotool or whatever. go to:
/home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
and comment out the line @point-rpi and remember, it will hide/center the mouse pointer, not move it.
The fallowing worked for me.
@reboot sleep 5 && xdotool mousemove 300 250
I'm not sure of the boot process but it probably got to do with the fact that xdtool has not started by the time you execute that command.
Look like @point-rpi was deprecated.
Now it's a property in /home/pi/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel for default user
Global {
...
point_at_menu=1
Change it to point_at_menu=0 to disable pointing at menu on startup.
Credits to https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=248530#p1590287
Install the xautomation package
sudo apt-get install xautomation
Now we have xte, which can simulate the movement of the mouse and keyboard keypress
Examples of xte usage
Move the cursor to the point x = 10 and y = 20 on the screen grid
xte 'mousemove 10 20'
Shift relative to the current cursor location on x = 10 and y = 10
xte 'mousermove 10 10'
Source: https://anton.logvinenko.name/en/blog/emulation-of-mouse-movements-and-keystrokes.html