ClickPaw Tutorial
An image-based auto clicker integrated with Shortcuts app. This article will teach you how to use it.
Get it here! https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/clickpaw/id6463473399?mt=12
What can this app do?
ClickPaw is not just another auto-clicker app; it’s a tool that utilizes image processing. It allows you to define where to click using an image. It can wait for an image to appear on the screen before clicking it.
It integrates with macOS native Shortcuts actions that lets you create workflows that can be combined with actions from other apps, creating endless possibilities.
What inspires me to build this is I want to automate some repetitive task I need to do every day in a game I played recently.
How to use?
Let’s try to automate playing “Where’s Waldo” 🤣.
It’s a game where you have to find a guy inside a picture. We’ll learn how to use ClickPaw’s actions in Shortcuts app to help us find him.
Unfortunately, I cannot find Waldo in this picture yet, so I’ll just use this little yellow dog for now. 🤣
What you need
- Download and run ClickPaw app
- Save those 2 images above (scene.jpg and dog.jpg). We will use it later.
Steps
- Open ClickPaw app. Click both “⚠️ Request” buttons to provide Accessibility and Screen Capture permissions.
- If successful, “⚠️ Request” buttons should turn to “✅ Allowed”
- Next, click “Create a new shortcut…” button. Shortcuts app will open with a create new shortcut window.
- In that window, search for “Open File” action, double click it to add it to the flow. Then select scene.jpg you downloaded earlier. Then click “Default App” and select “Preview”.
- Click the Play button on top to run the action. The image should be opened in Preview app.
- Note: If you have multiple screen, move it to the main screen — the one with menu bar when you arrange the screens in System Settings. (The app only supports main screen at the moment.)
- Go back to Shortcuts app. Now search for “ClickPaw” app. Add “Click image” action.
- In Click action, click “<Image>” and choose dog.jpg.
- Click on the play button to run the shortcut again. You should see the mouse moves to where the dog is.
- In case you don’t believe that it is working. You can screenshot another part of the image and try. 😁
Now let’s explore some “if” statement.
- Search and add “If” action.
- Inside “If” action, add “Show Alert” action with text “Dog found!”.
And in “Otherwise, add another “Show Alert” with “Dog not found :(”
- Run the Shortcut, you should see “Dog found!” alert.
- You can try changing dog.jpg to something else not on the screen. Then the other message should appear.
- If you find the wait for failure is a bit too long, that’s because by default the “Click” action will retry a few times before it fails. You can customize this by clicking “Show More” on the right side. A menu should appear. You can control how many times it will retry, how long should it wait before each retry, and other things.
- Hovering mouse on a parameter will display a tooltip explaining what each value means.
Other features
- “Click position” action — clicks at the specified position
- Built-in emergency stop hotkey: “CMD+ESC”.
- The app has disabled “Outgoing Network Connections” entitlement, so no data can be sent to the internet, improving security.
Current limitations
Since this is the first release, there’s still some work in progress.
- Only supporting main screen
- Only supporting left click
- The input image has to be the same size as it appears on the screen. Otherwise, accuracy decreases.
Future plans
More features are in the plan. Depending on your support, you may be able to see these features :)
- Screen selection support
- Multi-screen support
- Click position offset
- Scrolling, Dragging
- Keyboard typing
- In-app flow editor — While Shortcuts can stack click actions together with basic conditions and looping, it has a lot of limitations like there’s no infinite loop, looping with time limit, no export functionality (without iCloud), etc. Also, image selection by file is slow to use. Those will take a lot more effort to build. So in the first release, I want to build things just enough to see if there’s really a demand for it.
Conclusion
Thanks for checking out ClickPaw. Please let me know if the tutorial is understandable, or if you have any suggestions.
