I don't like taking my hands off my keyboard.

Keyboard shortcuts (combined with a tiling windows manager) are my bread and butter. Most of my shortcuts help me manipulate or switch between open windows/applications.

• Problem: I need a lot of shortcuts.
• Problem: I was tired of having to get creative with my shortcuts (cmd+r, cmd-shift+r, ctrl-cmd-shift+r, etc...)
• Solution: khd — a modal hotkey daemon!

Modal hotkey daemon??

Modal == modes

If you've ever used vim, you're already familiar with this idea:

• Each mode acts like a layer
• For example — in normal mode (vim), hjkl act like directional (arrow) keys; in insert mode, they go back to being regular text-input keys
• You activate and deactivate modes as needed

Probably the most important advantage (imo) of modal shortcuts is being able to create multiple, mnemonic shortcuts using the same keys, without having to combine/hold down ridiculous amounts of modifier keys.

My modes

• Switcher — actions I do a lot (switching focus between windows, activating my other modes)
• Window — actions on a window (resizing, toggling the window's tiling mode)
• Space — actions on a desktop/workspace (rotating layout, switching desktops)

Installing & configuring khd

Documentation for writing a configuration file isn't beginner-friendly, so here is the relative gist of it:

(Sorry Windows users, khd is only for macOS)

• Installation instructions are here
• Make a file called .khdrc in your home directory

Decide on the names of your modes

Maybe write them down on a piece of paper, somewhere.

Enable prefixes

Prefixes are great; instead of doing something like holding down shift+ctrl-h, a prefix allows you to execute the prefix and then tap the shortcut key.

For example, I can do ctrl-f and then tap h to switch focus to the window on the left.

If I want to enable a prefix for my switcher mode:

khd mode switcher prefix on

# To specify how long khd should wait for the next keypress:
khd mode switcher timeout 0.30  # seconds

Add shortcuts for activating a mode

To activate my switcher mode, I use ctrl-f:

ctrl - f : khd -e "mode activate switcher"

While I'm in switcher, I want shortcuts to activate my other modes:

switcher - w : khd -e "mode activate swap"
switcher - s : khd -e "mode activate space"
switcher - o : khd -e "mode activate window"

Since switcher is prefix-enabled, switcher - w means that I do ctrl-f and then hit w to get into swap mode.

Getting out of a mode

Once you have a mode enabled, you will remain in that mode unless you have a way to get back to the default mode.

In my config, I have several ways to go back to default that cover different use-cases:

# Go back to default if I do ctrl-f again (because that probably means that I
# changed my mind halfway through)
switcher + ctrl - f : khd -e "mode activate default"
swap + ctrl - f     : khd -e "mode activate default"
space + ctrl - f    : khd -e "mode activate default"
window + ctrl - f   : khd -e "mode activate default"

# Go back to default if I hit escape (I'm used to doing this in vim)
switcher - escape   : khd -e "mode activate default"
swap - escape       : khd -e "mode activate default"
space - escape      : khd -e "mode activate default"
window - escape     : khd -e "mode activate default"

Everything else

Now you have modes that you can assign shortcuts to! Shortcuts are assigned to shell commands.

Here's a shortcut I use to open a terminal window:

switcher - return  : open -na /Applications/kitty.app;\
                     khd -e "mode activate default"

Syntax & etc.

Details on syntax can be found in the official sample config

You can find my config in my .dotfiles repository