Feature: auto-send keypress on WebRTC connect to wake display

[theoriginalgri]

A note for the community

Note

Please vote on this issue by adding a 👍 reaction to the original issue to help the community and maintainers prioritize this request.

Disclaimer

• I have read and understood the disclaimer.
• I plan to implement the feature myself.

Subsystem

{"UI" => "Screen"}

Feature description

I'd like to request a feature that I can configure a given keyboard key (or sequence) that's being executed when connecting.

I have a decent amount of Mac Minis with JetKVMs attached which always decide to turn their displays off and I get greeted with "No HDMI connected" on connect. The only way to wake the display is by opening the virtual keyboard and pressing "Home".

I'm looking for a way to automate this. Alternatively, a manual "Wake" action (e.g. next to or as a replacement to "Wake on LAN" would be great). I am aware I could enable mouse jiggling, but that's not reliable when the Mac Mini is stuck on its boot screen where the FileVault password needs to be entered.

[ryanwwest]

I'm facing similar issues so on a MacBook Pro, so this would be nice (I'll need to see if the virtual Home key works, I've had to go use the keyboard itself to wake it up).

My issue is even more bizarre as the computer doesn't accept the USB connection until I first connect and disconnect an apple-branded keyboard, and then it works until the computer shuts off. But that's another issue.

[adamshiervani]

This makes sense for headless machines that aggressively blank their displays.

The keyboard macro engine already exists in the firmware. What's missing is a config option to designate one macro as "run on first session connect" and a small hook in onFirstSessionConnected() to execute it. That's a contained change.

As a workaround today, mouse jiggling with a short inactivity window (e.g. 60s) can prevent the display from blanking — but as you noted, that's not reliable on FileVault boot screens.

Tracking as a feature request. If anyone wants to take a stab at it, the relevant files are webrtc.go (onFirstSessionConnected), config.go (add an OnConnectMacroID field), and the existing macro RPC plumbing in jsonrpc.go.