Karabiner vs karabiner elements install#
Karabiner vs karabiner elements full#

Thankfully, Karabiner's author, Fumihiko Takayama, began work on a complete rewrite of Karabiner, which is currently called Karabiner Elements. Then came macOS Sierra, which changed enough of the input layers of its kernel, that Karabiner was unable to function. But this thought came to me only when I finished writing and I’m too lazy to rewrite it.Over the last few years, various people have used Karabiner to remap Caps Lock to cmd+shift+opt+ctrl, which is such an unusual combination of modifier keys, that it effectively makes Caps behave as a completely new modifier (which we have collectively called 'Hyper', in reference to old UNIX workstation keyboards). Weirdly enough this post is not very useful for English speakers, so there is no real reason to write it in English.

Here are my Karabiner config and Hammerspoon config. And it’s been so comfortable that I use that on my escapefull Macbook Air even though there is a real Escape key. It took me a week to train my muscle memory and it’s been years now since I thought about what layout is currently enabled.Īlmost forgot! Since I got escapeless Macbook Pro, I configured my fn key to work as an Escape key when clicked. How do you like that? When I press the left Command key, my keyboard switches to English no matter what state it was in.

Karabiner vs karabiner elements install#

I discovered that Karabiner has an excellent way to switch inputs directly, without needing Hammerspoon! So now you can go to where complex modifications are shared and just install it in your Karabiner. And it triples its usefulness as an application launcher. Hammerspoon has also replaced my previous god of window layouts, SizeUp, I just configured shortcuts the same. So I have this in my config: hs.hotkey.bind(, 'F16', function() It has an extensive library of functions and the one most needed by me is switching a keyboard layout. Hammerspoon is a tool to script macOS in Lua. This doesn’t sound as useful until you learn about Hammerspoon, another exceptional software! So what I did is I mapped my left Command key to F16, right Command to F17 and right Option to F18. That is a game-changer! There is a lot of modifier keys for us to use! Old Way

While this sounds boring, there is an exceptional feature: it can make a key behave like one when clicked and another when pressed and held. It makes you able to change any key to any other key. So how do you solve that? Easy! With those hands (shake your hands in the air)!Įnter Karabiner-Elements - a powerful keyboard customizer. This makes layout juggling mentally taxing: you have to think about it all the time.

Karabiner vs karabiner elements full#

Then there is a middle ground when you use a shortcut to switch to “previous”, but if you hold it, it’ll show you full choice.Įither way, it sucks: you have to know where you are right now (be it Latin or one of Cyrillic layouts) to get where you need. Then there are freaks (a majority of the population, actually), who use single hotkey to switch between three layouts (one after each other, so sometimes to get somewhere you click once and sometimes twice). This makes a single hotkey to switch layouts bearable but limits your communication abilities. For example, some of them just have two layouts: either English/Russian or English/Ukrainian.

What do you do? Well, most people cope in the worst ways possible. So you have three keyboard layouts and a single keyboard. Different enough to make a single unified layout (where you have all letters for both alphabets) so annoying that I will not speak of it. And keyboard layouts for those two are a little bit different. After hundreds of years of Russian rule, we got a situation where the Russian language is widespread along with Ukrainian. So it’s like a layout for Latin letters (for writing text in English and programming) and layout for Cyrillic letters.īut, you see, here comes a problem. That makes living in Ukraine similar to living in Russia or elsewhere where they have the same problem. For example, you can’t just use a single layout like all those peoples in the USA or elsewhere where they have this luxury. Life has blessed me with being born in Ukraine this complicates life a bit though when dealing with computers.