xdotool
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 31 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Command-line tool for simulating keyboard, mouse and window actions on X11, popular for scripting and test automation. Critics note it runs into gaps and inconsistent behavior.
Command-line tool for simulating keyboard, mouse and window actions on X11, popular for scripting and test automation. Critics note it runs into gaps and inconsistent behavior.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Automates repetitive testing and checks
“can automate a lot of checks that normally takes hours of repetitive testing”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Updated GPG Key for Signing Firefox and Thunderbird Releases” “I can at least add xvfb, xdotool, and other utils”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “Neverclick: Desktop application for performing mouse actions with your keyboard” Simple to call from scripts
“With X it's easy, just call xdotool.”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig” “xdotool and wmctrl is what you need”
Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “O&O ShutUp10 – The antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11” Best available tool for X11
“xdotool is kind of the best we have”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure” “xdotool and wmctrl is what you need”
Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “O&O ShutUp10 – The antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11” Works well in practice
“that works so well (on my machine) I can't believe it”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Hot Wiring the Lisp Machine” “work fine for Cloudflare's”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Meta's Muse is fantastic for web scraping”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unreliable or hard to get working
“tools like xdotool end up running into gaps or inconsistent behavior”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure” “I struggled to get xdotool to work correctly back in 2014”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Can I start using Wayland in 2026?”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
13 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“work fine for Cloudflare's”
“xdotool and wmctrl is what you need”
“can automate a lot of checks that normally takes hours of repetitive testing”
“I can at least add xvfb, xdotool, and other utils”
“that works so well (on my machine) I can't believe it”
“automating stuff with xdotool”
“I really don't think a guide for someone wanting to make a speech-to-text app should be recommending X11”
“xdotool is awesome and this is the first I'm hearing of it”
“I struggled to get xdotool to work correctly back in 2014”
“With X it's easy, just call xdotool.”
“xdotool is kind of the best we have”
“xdotool, I think, used the same hack to input characters that are not in the layout”
“tools like xdotool end up running into gaps or inconsistent behavior”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.