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Ask HN: Useful Keylogger for Recall

3 points by atmanactive 3 months ago · 5 comments · 1 min read

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Greetings fellow humans.

I'm looking for a way to quickly recall text snippets I typed few minutes earlier that I DIDN'T add to clipboard.

Clipboard recall tools are abundant, and they are all, more or less, working great.

But now, I am looking for the same thing on a keystroke level. In other words, I am looking for a non-malicious keylogger that could auto-split the stream of keystrokes on ENTER keycode, and/or user-adjustable timeout, and would present a list of snippets by pressing a special shortcut. From there, a simple double-click on the item would copy it to clipboard.

So, a typed text history tool of sorts.

A keyboard recall tool.

A hybrid between clipboard recall and a keylogger.

Was searching on Github, couldn't find any.

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Bender 3 months ago

An OS agnostic solution would be a keyboard hardware keylogger [1]. I have no idea who sells a modern version but I'm sure they must still exist. I used them extensively in the past to see if anyone was screwing with my computer. Some of them can transmit over bluetooth or wifi to download stored keystrokes.

Example [2] never tried this one

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_keylogger

[2] - https://www.keydemon.com/en/keydemon/66-usb-hardware-keylogg...

BobbyTables2 3 months ago

I suspect any such thing would be a bit messy unless it comprehended mouse actions as well.

One might type into a box, click another, and continue typing.

Even harder is to deal with “typing replaces selection” scenarios.

  • atmanactiveOP 3 months ago

    Great insight, thank you. Yes, so, the splitting engine would have to be really flexible and sophisticated, listening to not just the keystrokes but also to mouse clicks.

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