Tag Archives: applescript

When recently using Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) I was remotely connected via the RealVNC client, but was having trouble sending keystrokes like F2 to enter the BIOS, F12 to select a startup device, or F8 to access the Windows startup menu. This setup is complicated for a few reasons – first I’m using a Mac keyboard. Secondly, OS X remaps the function keys to do things like dashboard, expose, brightness, and volume by default. After a little searching and trial and error, I found that I can use the free utility included with Mac OS X – AppleScript Editor.app – to send keycodes to the VNC connection. Here’s the code for the applescript you can use to send the F12 key: tell application “VNC Viewer” activate tell application “System Events” to key code 111 end tell This is what it should look like in the editor: To send key combos, like holding down alt and pressing F4, the syntax would be something like this: tell application “System Events” to key code 118 using {command down} We use command instead of alt because that is how Real VNC Viewer translates the “alt” key for a remote windows system by default. To send other keyboard F-keys to the remote Windows machine, use the table below to find the appropriate key – make sure to reference the “Mac” column even if the remote machine is a Windows box. What about JAVA? But what happens if you are running a java applet for … Continue reading →