How to detect mouse and keyboard inactivity on Linux

Question

I am developing a python application that checks for user inactivity. Is there a way to check for keystrokes and mouse movements on Linux?

Answer 1

You can control the files / dev / input / * when the key is pressed / the mouse is moved, it is written to one of these files.

Try this for example:

fh = file('/dev/input/mice') while True: fh.read(3) print 'Mouse moved!' 

Now that I think about it, it would be better to use something like xidle to detect inactivity.