Mouseable: Replace a mouse or trackpad with the keyboard | Hacker News Reader

Mouseable: Replace a mouse or trackpad with the keyboard

github.com

59 pointsh1x30 comments

Blind developer here. If anyone wants to use computer without a mouse, I can also recommend screenreaders for the blind, such as NVDA. Blind people have to use screenreaders,, but if anyone sighted has such an aversion to mouse, why not try a screenreader. They allow to control all applications (including browsers, IDEs, anything else) purely from keyboard without mouse. It's a lot of work to learn all the shortcuts though, I would have thought it's not worth it, but looking at people developing this kind of mouse-free tools, maybe someone might find it worth the time.

NVDA: https://www.nvaccess.org/download/

If anyone is interested in writing the same in Rust(!) then there are two somewhat cross-platform libraries which can help:

https://crates.io/crates/enigo

https://crates.io/crates/device_query

I coughed out a minimal example for your convenience:

https://wringing.it/blog/auto-hotkey-in-rust/

After developing a tennis elbow injury due to mouse overuse I've built an app that completely replaces mouse or touchpad. You don't need to use the keyboard. While tools in Vim style are nice you also put a lot of load on your wrists when typing.

Meet Cursorly, it's easy as waving your hand in the air (or moving your head). Powered by machine learning that tracks your hand you can move the cursor and do all mouse related operations like clicking or scrolling without any pressure on your muscles or wrists. Feel free to check it out. I would love to hear some feedback!

https://cursorly.app/

My solution before this was Tobii eyetracker. What didn't work for me with an eyetracker is that the support for large and curved screens is just awful, especially when you are reaching the edge of the screen, it just refuses to work. Not to mention that you can't use an eyetracker on multiple displays. It was also very hard to set it up on multiple OS's.

My Ducky One 2 keyboard has a built-in mouse emulation mode than can be activated with an obscure key sequence. That'll make the kb register as regular USB hid mouse device and should work pretty much anywhere.

You control the mouse with the numpad direction keys. Never used it but I guess it may come in handy someday.

I think a lot of QMK-enabled keyboards have this feature too, and can have the key combo that turns it on changed. I haven’t used it personally but I can definitely see it being useful in some circumstances.

It's a nice-to-have feature if you've got a Bluetooth mouse, and are working with a desktop. (Otherwise, your laptop's trackpad will be better).

It's easier to drive a cursor with keys on the keyboard compared to fiddling around with shortcuts to add a Bluetooth mouse e.g. on a Linux live USB, or a fresh Linux installation.

I use the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/) which provides this natively too.

I really liked it, but still after about 2 months of only using this as my mouse, it couldn't fully replace a handheld mouse in speed in accuracy.

I'm a pretty shortcut driven guy, but not terminal bound (intellij, browser, slack are 90% of my day). I couldn't configure the speeds/acceleration/speed modifier key/etc to balance both getting across the screen and being able to click something as small as the window close button on a MacOS window.

Maybe played too many FPSs when i was teenager but I'm significantly better with a mouse to the point of frustration with keyboard mice.

Yeah, its the same with a trackpoint or trackpad. It isn't meant to replace a mouse or keyboard. Its meant to compliment it. A gamepad ('controller'?) has the same issue. Even a trackball. There are going to be use cases where one or the other is going to be better, and there's a very good reason the mouse is the default pointer device (although I heard a vertical mouse is good to avoid RSI, and I heard the same about trackballs).

I'm very happy with the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 on my Macbook Pro. I used to be very happy with a nub on my ThinkPad (trackpoint), but the trackpad on it was terrible compared to the Apple one. Right now, on my gaming desktop I use a wireless Logitech Hero mouse and a wireless headset (Logitech G933) and I'm well aware they deliver worse latency than wired (I do use a wired keyboard, by Wooting). To me, that's OK.

I'm also an outlier when it comes to touchscreen keyboards. I'm slow with it compared to youngsters. So I bought a 10 EUR 'air mouse' (I don't even use the mouse part right now) which has a physical keyboard. Its also very light. Not the best quality though, and not standard qwerty (but almost). I use it for my Nvidia Shield because I hate the manual typing on it.

With regards to this tool, I wonder if it would be useful to have region keybinds together with a trackpoint or the thingy on a GPD Pocket 2.

I think in an ideal world, I'd have my split keyboard sit in a custom fixture with an apple trackpad placed where my thumbs rest as per my MacBook pro.

On mbp i never feel need for a mouse.

I think the Linux desktop (at least when running under an xserver) does have an obscure keyboard-mouse function, see e.g. here [1].

This seems to be enabled by default when running the german-centric 'neo' keyboard layout ('setxkbmap de neo'), see here [2]. It is usable on the desktop that I'm typing this from (Devuan GNU/Linux with xfce4 desktop), tested it this moment (no numeric keypad on my keyboard, but with the neo layout Mod4 + right hand keys can be substituted for the numeric keypad)

[1] https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_use_the_numeric_keyboard_keys...

[2] https://www.neo-layout.org/Benutzerhandbuch/Tastaturmaus/

Windows and MacOS also have that. I think they both call it mouse keys. It's an accessibility setting.

For linux use: https://github.com/jordansissel/keynav

Just briefly tried this, keynav seems to do region selection instead of the mouseable's mouse movement way.

You can move the region and thus move the mouse actually:

From: https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav/

> The following is the default configuration:

    h : select the left half of the region
    j : select the bottom half of the region
    k : select the top half of the region
    l : select the right half of the region
    shift+h : move the region left
    shift+j : move the region down
    shift+k : move the region top
    shift+l : move the region right
    semicolon : Move the mouse to the center of the selected region
    spacebar : Move the mouse and left-click

Right, that's pretty different from mouseable's demo, which looks like you push keys in the same way you'd push a gamepads' arrow keys. I don't have a windows pc to try mouseable though.

Port from keynav to Windows: https://github.com/lesderid/keynavish

> Q: Does it work on ... Wayland...? > A: Sadly, no; keynav is totally dependent on X11, and porting it to any other graphical system would really be a clone/rewrite.

I hope it'll eventually get ported. It's such a useful tool. Much better for me than just moving the mouse around like "mouse keys" would.

As linked in the project readme, Windows accessibility includes 'Mouse Keys' built-in: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-mouse-keys-t... (Left Alt + left Shift + Num lock)

I was actually really excited to see this project pop up, because I am on a tenkeyless keyboard and so I can't use the built-in mouse keys functionality. It's funny that so many of the accessibility features in Windows are really opinionated and can't have their keys rebound. Mode switching to HJKL-as-mouse is just a preference for me, but I could imagine there are types of mobility disabilities where repositioning your hands any time you want to emulate a mouse could be difficult and frustrating. What's the point in MS making great built in tools that can't be modified to your own use cases?

note that you can replace the mouse in X using xdotool to do mouse pointer movements and mouse clicks if your window manager, such as i3, supports it. specifically you are looking for xdotool mousemove_relative. movement is in integer amounts specified by parameters.

I like the Rollermouse, it's a mouse that sits below your keyboard, so you never need to move at your elbow to reach the mouse again. I use my thumbs on it.

I have found Vimac [1] to be an okay alternative to mouse keys. Unfortunately I find that it's still slower than just grabbing the mouse. Performance can also vary depending on the number of clickable elements on the screen.

I kind of just rely on Vimium and Vim mode in editors/IDEs now.

[1]: https://vimacapp.com/

Mac users can use Karabiner Elements mouse mod https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/

https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/

Mouse mods https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/?q=Mouse

Huge benefit it’s fully customizable

> Limitations

> Windows Only

"setxkbmap -option keypad:pointerkeys"

This and tridactyl was enough for me. For IDE I use neovim anyways and if I have to use the cursor for some really specific task I stick an old wacom tablet.

I’ve seen a few of these types of programs but only used one. I found the movement speed to be awkward (too slow, too fast, no acceleration concept, etc).

Could anyone provide insights into tools they’ve tried / use that are least-worst?

Is there something similar on linux (instead of keynav)?

“Tackpad”? Certainly the title meant “trackpad”?

Yes, I believe the computer jargon term for an occurrence such as this is a 'typo.' :D

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