getting None instead of key name keyboard python. (mac)

Question

Why am I getting None in keystrokes.txt instead of the key names in python?

import keyboard

log_file = 'keystrokes.txt'

def on_key_press(event):
    with open(log_file, 'a') as f:
        f.write('{}\n'.format(event.name))

keyboard.on_press(on_key_press)

keyboard.wait()

This might have to do with me being on macOS. Even though I did add sudo to the process to give it admin privileges.

Answer 1

I don't think keyboard has ever worked reliably on macOS.

A more modern module that seems to work reliably with Python 3.12.1 and macOS 14.2.1 is pynput

Here's a brief example of how you could capture keyboard activity using the pynput module.

pip install pynput

Press esc to end the program.

from pynput import keyboard

def press(key):
    if hasattr(key, "char"):
        with open("key.log", "a") as log:
            log.write(key.char)

def release(key):
    return key != keyboard.Key.esc

with keyboard.Listener(on_press=press, on_release=release) as listener:
    listener.join()