By Leonardo - UmActually

Autopilot is kind of late to the party, but it's the solution for the power users who happen to be Zoom users as well. This program uses the PyAutoGUI Python library in order to automate keyboard and mouse input to join a Zoom class or meeting. When installed, you can invoke Autopilot in the command line with either autopilot or ap. The list of all the arguments can be found in this README, below.

Autopilot features two primary use cases:

1. Join a meeting "right now".
2. Schedule a meeting to join later and, until then, leave the program waiting. Your Mac can be asleep (Not with the lid closed!) during this.

Use case number two enables the user, for example, to leave Autopilot at night and wake up with one task less in their morning routine: Zoom's already open. No need to ask the team or class for the meeting ID this time.

What really makes this a convenient tool is the possibility of building your own schedule for meetings that is automatically saved and repeated on a weekly basis. When you run autopilot with no arguments, the program will search and wait for the next meeting in your schedule. Or if you happen to be 10 minutes late to a past meeting, it will immediately join that instead.

% autopilot
"Electromagnetism Exam" found in schedule. Wake time: 7/5/2022 11:00:00
Autopilot ready. You can now put your mac to sleep. To cancel, use ctrl+C.
Waiting for meeting...

To edit the schedule, run autopilot -c. This launches the Autopilot config tool.

Electromagnetism Exam

On day(s): Tue
Time: 11:00
Meeting ID: 123456789

[0] Go back, [1] Edit, [2] Delete

Choice? (0-2)

If instead the user needs to join a meeting that is not in the schedule, the meeting ID/link and optionally the meeting time can be passed as positional args in any order.

% ap 16:00 https://example.zoom.us/j/123456789
Wake time: 7/5/2022 16:00:00
Autopilot ready. You can now put your mac to sleep. To cancel, use ctrl+C.
Waiting for meeting...

If the time argument is not passed, the meeting will be joined immediately.

% ap https://example.zoom.us/j/123456789
Opening zoom: 16:03:34

To install Autopilot, download or clone this repository and use the install.bash script located at the base folder. Here is a step-by-step description:

1. Once you have the Autopilot repository on your computer, open the Terminal application.

2. Change your directory to the Autopilot base folder. For example, if the Autopilot folder is located in your downloads, run cd Downloads/Autopilot in the terminal.

3. Make the install script executable by running the command chmod u+x install.bash.

4. Run the script with ./install.bash.

$ cd Downloads/Autopilot
$ chmod u+x install.bash
$ ./install.bash

Installing PyAutoGUI (Python module for automation)

...

Copying source files to ~/Library/com.UmActually.Autopilot

Creating autopilot & ap executables

Moving executables to /usr/local/bin/

Password:

Autopilot successfully installed. Reopen your terminal to start using it.

There are some things to consider and prepare before using Autopilot. For starters, i'd strongly recommend giving the program a test run before anything. You can always add the -t flag so the command runs in test mode, which stops the program right before the final "join" button in zoom is pressed. However, I recommend testing while joining a real meeting as well.

In the first use, it is very likely that some functions of the program will throw a macOS confirmation dialog:

• Using PyAutoGUI will prompt you to give the Terminal access to accessibility functions, unless access was already given.
• Also, using AppleScripts will result in an initial confirmation prompt.

You must be very careful with this. Automating keyboard and mouse can lead to some accidents. If you ever need to stop the program while it's entering a meeting, immediately move the mouse cursor to one of the corners of the screen.

If instead you need to stop the program while it's waiting for a meeting, just use control + C in the terminal.

In the future, I plan to allow for image searching in order to press the buttons with any window location (PyAutoGUI makes it very easy). But for now, it is necessary for the Zoom main menu window to be in the top-left corner. The program looks particularly for the orange in the "New Meeting" button, and then uses Command + J to open the join prompt.

When Autopilot is invoked and will wait for a meeting, the password of the user will be prompted. This is necessary to in order to schedule the display waking (the pmset command needs sudo), and to log in once it's awake. You can disable Ask password from the Autopilot config tool by running autopilot -c. This way, Autopilot will no longer ask for the user password. However, if you disable this, you'll need to make sure password isn't prompted when waking your mac: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Require Password after sleep or screen saver begins (set to the max). You could also use the caffeinate command, but I personally wouldn't mess with preventing the computer's sleep.

autopilot [-flags] [time HH:MM] [meeting ID]

ap [-flags] [time HH:MM] [meeting ID]

These are optional positional argumets. Their order does not matter. If neither of them are given, the program will use the schedule. If only the ID argument is passed, zoom will be opened immediately with the given ID or link. It's worthy to note that time can be inputted in many ways: HH:MM, H:MM, or even H:M if we can call that a thing. However it always needs to be written as 24-hour time.

-h, --help Display the help message and exit.

-c, --config, -s, --settings Change your Autopilot settings or schedule.

-l, --late Late to class. Join the closest present/past meeting of your schedule, regardless of how much time has passed since.

-r, --recent Join the most recent Autpilot-launched meeting.

-t, --test For testing. Stops right before entering meeting.

-i, --input Ask for time and ID, rather than using arguments or schedule.

-q, --quiet Print nothing to the console.

-v, --version Display program's version number and exit.