Karabiner elements macos mac#

Next, we look for simple_modifications key where all of the shortcuts will go.Įvery shortcut contains a from key (that is the button on your keyboard, that will trigger the shortcut) and a to key (that corresponds to the shortcut you want to trigger). Note that the Product ID and Vendor ID’s are the same as in the previous image. 'disable_built_in_keyboard_if_exists': false, If you can’t find your device identifiers in the configuration you can add another entry and change the ID’s. This way the keys you modify will only apply to that specific keyboard and your main typing keyboard will stay unaffected. The Vendor ID and Product ID identifiers that we noted previously and edit only the device which has those exact identifiers. In the configuration file there is a “devices” section under which we need to find Simple modifications – trigger a keyboard shortcut with a single key

The syntax is strict, and text editors that understand json file format will warn you if syntax is not correct. If you’re not familiar with JSON files, their structure is quite simple – the whole file consists of key-value pairs, and in this Karabiner configuration file every key and value is also easily readable and understandable. You will need to navigate to this folder first: ~/.config/karabiner/ and open your karabiner.json file. Of course, instead of using a text editor with syntax-highlighting you can edit the file in the built-in text editor or even just terminal, but that’s a bit more of a hassle.

This is where text editor I mentioned in the beginning will come in handy. You might have noticed that you can’t add multiple options to your Simple Modifications, just a single From key and single To key. Finding Vendor and Product ID’s for the external keyboard. Here you will need to remember Vendor ID and Product ID, because with Simple Modifications, we will not change all inputs, but only the ones for that specific keyboard. When you have connected your external keyboard and started Karabiner-Elements, you want to make sure that your keyboard is shown in Devices tab. However, in this article we are going to look mostly at keyboard key modifications. It is a very powerful tool that allows all kinds of input modifications in any way you can imagine. A custom keyboard shortcut that originally doesn’t exist.Īt this point you should have all the necessary shortcuts set, and we can move on to the interesting part – using Karabiner-Elements. Repeat the process for all items you need a shortcut for. For example, I will add a shortcut to “Check for Updates…”, leave it as system-wide by not choosing any specific application, and set the keyboard shortcut as Control+Option+Command+U, since neither system, nor any of my installed apps use this shortcut. Here you can add a shortcut to your menu item, and specify whether this will be for a single application, or system-wide. You will need to navigate to your Keyboard Preferences, open Shortcuts tab and find App Shortcuts in the leftmost list. When installed, it will find and display all keyboard shortcuts for the application in focus, so you can make sure you don’t re-use shortcuts that are already in use, otherwise unexpected results may occur. If you don’t have any menu items without an assigned shortcut, skip this part.Ī useful application to avoid shortcut conflicts is CheatSheet. This post is going to address all three of these problems with a lot of useful extras on top of it.įirst, since we are going to be working with keyboard shortcuts, we will start with assigning a shortcut for a menu item that does not have a shortcut assigned already. And the third problem is that some often used menu commands simply don’t have a keyboard shortcut assigned at all. And this is not a simple shortcut anymore, because it requires both of your hands to use it properly.Īnother problem is the sheer amount of different keyboard shortcuts – system-wide as well as app-specific, that if you don’t use multiple times a day, most likely won’t be remembered.

Karabiner elements macos mac#

I personally often use Mac built-in screenshot function (Shift+Control+Command+4), so the captured picture is saved in clipboard.

We are all familiar with at least a couple simple keyboard shortcuts that we use all the time in our daily lives – Command+C for copy, Command+V for paste, and possibly some more.

Text editor with syntax highlighting (I use Visual Studio Code).

Cheapest external keyboard you can find.

This is super useful if you want to be more productive as a programmer or tester. In this post, I will focus on the possibilities of using an external keyboard as an additional input device for your Mac that goes beyond just typing key by key.