luahotkey is a keyboard remapper, as a luarocks package.
luahotkey only builds for Lua version 5.1 (or LuaJIT). You will also need to install it as root, as you need root permissions to modify input devices.
sudo luarocks install --server=https://luarocks.org/dev luahotkey --lua-version=5.1
luahotkey depends on libevdev, so you may have to install something like libevdev-devel and pass in the location of the header files.
- As opposed to other keyboard remappers that have their own DSLs,
luahotkeyis a package for a general-purpose programming language. This makes achieving very specific behavior relatively easy, as you can just code it in Lua. - Almost all keyboard remappers use the concept of 'layers' - a set of remappings for a set of keys.
luahotkeyhas layers too, but the difference is that you can chain layers together. This makes certain behavior possible:- Put your preferred keyboard layout at the front of the layer chain, and all further modifications will just follow the new layout.
- Have a layer for systemwide hotkeys, and another for application-specific hotkeys which you can switch out with the IPC support.
These advantages aside, please remember that this is still very untested software that is prone to change.
The only documentation currently available is lua_ls annotations. You may have to do modify your workspace.library config for it to properly show up in your editor.
local lhk = require 'lhk'
local rapidjson = require 'rapidjson'
require 'keycodes.global'
local modifiers = {
KEY_LEFTSHIFT,
KEY_LEFTCTRL,
KEY_LEFTMETA,
KEY_LEFTALT
}
-- This allows you to set separate hotkeys for each modifier key combination.
local main = lhk.switcher.new(modifiers)
-- Ctrl-Meta-Alt-Q quits the program
main:at{KEY_LEFTCTRL, KEY_LEFTMETA, KEY_LEFTALT}:register(KEY_Q, lhk.hotkey.new {
actions = {
lhk.action.custom(lhk.stop)
}
})
local firefox = lhk.switcher.new(modifiers)
-- Map Alt+Up to Alt+Left
firefox:at{KEY_LEFTALT}:register(KEY_UP, lhk.hotkey.new {
actions = lhk.actions.standard_hotkey(main.keynode, {KEY_LEFTALT}, KEY_LEFT),
criteria = lhk.criteria.new {
transition = 'Press'
}
})
-- Map Alt+Down to Alt+Right
firefox:at{KEY_LEFTALT}:register(KEY_DOWN, lhk.hotkey.new {
actions = lhk.actions.standard_hotkey(main.keynode, {KEY_LEFTALT}, KEY_RIGHT),
criteria = lhk.criteria.new {
transition = 'Press'
}
})
---@type table<string, lhk.Switcher>
local application_layers = {
['org.mozilla.firefox'] = firefox
}
-- All events will be passed to `main`
lhk.set_root(main.keynode)
lhk.settings.set {
grab = false, -- 'grabbing' an input device prevents other processes from accessing it.
-- I recommend setting it to `false` while testing.
input = '/dev/input/event3',
output = 'test',
use_socket = true, -- Use a socket to receive outside events
socket = 'socket',
}
-- Receive current windo info from sway
os.execute("sh -c \"swaymsg -m -t subscribe [\\'window\\'] > socket &\"")
local buffer = ''
lhk.settings.socket_handler(function (message)
buffer = buffer .. message
while (true) do
local newline_pos = buffer:find('\n')
if not newline_pos then break end
local single_message = buffer:sub(1, newline_pos - 1)
buffer = buffer:sub(newline_pos + 1)
local decoded_message = rapidjson.decode(single_message)
local index = decoded_message.container.app_id
print(index)
-- Connect an application layer to the main layer
main:extend(application_layers[index])
end
end)
lhk.start()