Mouseless – keyboard-driven control of macOS/Linux/Windows
mouseless.click
mouseless.click
Similar to Vimium, but for the whole OS. Apparently Homerow is similar, judging from comments I'm seeing here.
I really wish I knew an equivalent for Linux. I might even leave Gnome behind if a different DE has a good model for this.
Also, I'm not sure the dynamic nature of the hotkeys is a good thing. I could imagine if you use Mouseless for a long period of time, muscle memory might prevail as screen locations map to the same set of keys.
https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot
Unfortunately both modes are necessary, because many apps have all sorts of accessibility issues.
"Manipulate macOS masterfully, minus the mouse."
(But I bet that most Macbook users don't even use a mouse.)
The name is very reasonable, but effectively ungoogleable.
I highly encourage you to vibecode something. Its really easy. You can get a small fast library that can do OCR with coordinates, and the rest is just interfacing with the x server to draw stuff over the top.
As one who's driving Claude daily due to corporate mandates, I can see why people fall in love with genAI coding, but my revulsion has only grown as I've learned to do it, so I won't be spending my free time with LLMs.
Cagebreak is like ratpoison for Wayland. (I haven't tried it.)
I suspect awesomewm might be a good candidate too. I messed around with trying to make it more ratpoisony. The results were pretty good.
I've considered keyboard-driven WMs before, but have thus far gotten by using regular WMs with a few custom keybinds for window sizing, movement, and monitor placement.
As long as you have an automated algorithm for the basic layout, it works pretty well.
I still have to contendb with apps that don't offer the shortcuts I want, though, and that's when Shortcat is very handy.
I've been looking for something like this
Now, third party software, is always going to be all over the place. Stuff that was largely built on Win32 components works fine, but "modern" stylized applications rarely have strong support.
There is one major improvement you can do on Mac, at least for menus:
I really feel like this used to be the default. That's how I always did it in macOS going back to the early 2000's.
Only in the last two versions or so did I notice it was no longer the default. I'm glad to see here that I can now re-enable it.
Edit: I see that I do have it enabled. But for some reason there are a lot of programs where it doesn't seem to work anymore, no matter what the settings. Off the top of my head: Half the Adobe programs I use for work.
Seeing as both can be accommodated, I would argue it's an objective limitation of macOS.
Well Tim, I suppose the blind do outnumber the handless.
Qutebrowser was my favorite browser for keyboard navigation but firefox, chrome, etc. have extensions for this as well.
Look Ma, No mouse !
The problem is that they are less discoverable and you need to make and effort to get used to using them instead of point and click.
Economics be damned, if you're going to make a native app, use the OS provided toolkits.
Unfortunately in Excel many operations can be done only with the function keys (e.g. F2, Shift-F8). I'd argue that leaving the center of the keyboard to press the function keys is not easier or quicker than reaching for the mouse.
That's called mob rule. We don't act like cavemen anymore. We build entire civilizations to prevent that sort of thing. You may have read in a history book once "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
The word "all" is important.
Agreed. Using keyboard keys to emulate a mouse cursor seems like it ought to be a last resort for graphical applications that lack proper accessibility affordances.
Contrast that with command palettes, accessibility controls, syntax tree navigation, and other approaches that rely on the names, content, and document structure that users already know rather than a special mode that displays two letter codes that must be read each time or memorized. Many of these other approaches also allow users to activate buttons, menu items, and links that are outside the current viewport or hidden in menus which reduces the overall number of "clicks" required to perform those actions. The downside is that they can take longer to type than a two-letter code. Still, my guess is that for most people it would be overall more efficient to optimize for cognitive load than pure speed.
(Though in the long run, I suspect that improvements in eye-tracking will lead to hybrid systems that are both lower cognitive load and faster than any of these.)
It would be great if they built Vim style shortcuts into the spec and browser like you suggested but in the time being we have the Vimium extensions for other browsers. Personally I am not a fan of extensions unless I write them myself.
Been using this for years.
more GUI, more visibility!
There's plenty of TUIs for the dozens of you to use.
Wayland port: https://github.com/kovetskiy/waynav
For vim, there's easymotion or hop.nvim.
For tmux, there's Morantron/tmux-fingers.
For Chrome, there's Vimium.
You can also flash your keyboard to have mouse controls (https://docs.qmk.fm/features/mouse_keys).
For us keyboard geeks, there is monkeytype: https://monkeytype.com/
I was always in the camp that believed that the keyboard was always faster than mouse for complex workflows.
Then a couple of weeks ago I spent most of a day in a hospital emergency room with someone, and couldn't believe the way those E.R. nurses fly through the menus and options in Epic using just a mouse.
I'm now closer to believing that "muscle memory is muscle memory." But I suspect it only works if the windows appear in the exact same place all the time.
Replacing software with poor keyboard navigation support with better, more modern alternatives will literally do 10x more for your productivity than faster mouse skills.
Mouse aim training has to be the saddest way to improve productivity I've seen anyone suggest.
References mentioned all going on about productivity etc. Red flags all-round.
- need to CLICK on Unlock to show pricing
(just thought it was funny)
- https://github.com/moverest/wl-kbptr
- https://github.com/petoncle/mousemaster
- https://github.com/y3owk1n/neru
- https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot
- https://github.com/jbensmann/mouseless
- https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd (not really maintained anymore)
...which supports Vimium-style hints mode as well as the grid-based approach shown in this "Mouseless (app) explained in 80 seconds" video. It also has a very responsive maintainer.
Personally I like vimium's approach much better than the grid. Unfortunately not everything has a good accessibility tree (Zed sadly doesn't), but I just realized loading neru's page that I'm behind in versions. I haven't tried the "Native Vision OCR" addition to hints mode yet.
I also like having a trackpad right on the keyboard (using a SoflePLUS2 right now though I'm not totally sold on column stagger). Then I can use a real pointing device with only a slight movement of one hand. In the Mouseless video, the creator has tried to minimize the distance by putting the mouse between the halves of his keyboard, but I think he's both compromised the keyboard position to ease using the mouse (arms wide and parallel with wrists turned inward rather than arms converging toward a more splayed keyboard with somewhat closer halves, untented to minimize vertical separation compared to the mouse) and might have an uncomfortably small mousepad to avoid doing this even more. Not a compromise I'd want to make.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors/maintainers.
This one is recursive-grid for Hammerspoon users on macOS, and is probably the easiest of the open source implementations to fully customize. (I made it years ago)
I don't understand why they are not popular at all and only a few manufacturers build them.
It doesn't replace a mouse for me, but the track point is between the G H B keys and can be reached without moving the fingers away from the typing position. So it's great for some simple mouse commands.
(I mean yeah, of course AuDHD makes it harder to find a job, no surprise there. But it's a shame that laptop manufacturers make it even harder.)
Fwiw... (1) Lenovo sells compact keyboards with trackpoint. USB and bluetooth. There are mouse buttons below Space, but it cuts off there, with no pad. I once taped a kludgy bare usb pad to one, which was ok, but the extra couple of cm separation was annoying. I considered grinding out some of the case, but don't recall if that turned out plausible. (2) Lenovo has tablets with detachable keyboards, with both trackpoint and touchpad. People have DIYed such (from an old X1) into a USB kbd - the pogo pins did USB. Lenovo currently sells a replacement kbd for the X12, but I don't know if its similarly DIYable. (3) Assorted other manufacturers make, or have made, kbds with devices resembling touchpoint, more or less. (4) Some note ancient Lenovo IBM SK-8840 PS/2 Wired Keyboard With TrackPoint still show up on ebay, fwiw.
Where can I get it? They stopped selling them around 2 years ago AFAIK. I have a few of them, but they are not very durable, so used ones are probably not a good option.
Only alternative I know of is https://tex.com.tw
[1]: https://uhk.io/
Ouch. Thanks for the catch.
On ebay just now, there's someone claiming they have "more than 10 available".
And yeah I know there are people lugging a massive mechanical keyboard to cafes but I find that about as annoying as getting used to the ridiculously bad keyboard and no trackpoint of Apple laptops.
It also didn't help that (at least for the T-series of the era) the trackpoint nib had a reputation for causing a bright spot on the LCD within a year or two, from the contact pressure when the lid was closed. I removed the rubber cover to avoid the screen damage, which guaranteed I would never use it.
I get that some people like it, but those are my two reasons for not :)
Because they are ugly, just like ThinkPads that include them.
I'm saying that the trend of consumer/business laptop lineups is to make all of them look similar to a MacBook, because that's what most people want. Of course there will always be exceptions, like the ThinkPad.
It's really hard to get an external keyboard with a track point. For laptops there are a lot of models to chose from, both used and new.
It's like vimium but for your entire mac. It hooks into the macOS accessibility APIs.
Free and open source is important and it's perfectly fine to be critical here.
I agree that I would never pay a subscription fee for any kind of system functionality, but there is a lifetime purchase option available, so there is no grounds to critique that here. Having extra payments models available in addition to a regular purchase model does not make a product worse.
They can log my keys all they want, I would never give a program like this internet access because it has no valid reason to ever connect to the internet (after purchasing a lifetime license). If you're serious about your privacy surely you take a little bit of responsibility for not giving every program you run unfettered access to your system?
(not affiliated, just a happy user for years now)
Hell - after installing, it shows a slider to help adjust the label size of each element - but I can't slide it because (surprise) Homerow doesn't support horizontal slider elements like this.
I also can't highlight text on the screen etc.
Struggling to find a usecase for Homerow that isn't just navigating chrome or my filesystem.
I'm using warpd which is a similar tool, and for me it's really not about speed, but more about the comfort of keeping my hands on the keyboard. Still using the mouse a lot but warpd is often handy.
“We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:
- Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
- The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers’ belief that the keyboard is faster.
People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement.
It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist.
While the keyboard users in this case feels as though they have gained two seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is really the case. Because while the keyboard users have been engaged in a process so fascinating that they have experienced amnesia, the mouse users have been so disengaged that they have been able to continue thinking about the task they are trying to accomplish. They have not had to set their task aside to think about or remember abstract symbols.
Hence, users achieve a significant productivity increase with the mouse in spite of their subjective experience.
Not that any of the above True Facts will stop the religious wars. And, in fact, I find myself on the opposite side in at least one instance, namely editing. By using Command X, C, and V, the user can select with one hand and act with the other. Two-handed input. Two-handed input can result in solid productivity gains (Buxton 1986).
Command-Key Illusion. Since users do experience the illusion that keyboarding is faster, there is market pressure to supply them with "shortcuts."—even when using "shortcuts" will actually slow them down. What I generally recommend is supplying as many "shortcuts" as demanded by the market—the real market, not the programmer in the cubicle next to you. But only if these "shortcuts" are not to the detriment of the user of the Macintosh visual interface. This leads to two important guidelines:
Guideline: The keyboard interface must not dictate the design of the visual interface.
Guideline: The work to design and build the keyboard interface should not sap resources that are needed for the creation of the visual interface.
In other words, don’t rape the primary interface for the benefit of so-called "power-users," who may well end up achieving lower productivity by using the keyboard interface anyway. This is a major problem right now.”
I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as Tog says (for example, I agree with Tog about cut/copy/paste and, historically, command-S for Save (which, with Mac software from the 1980s, you hit very frequently, if you wedding want to lose stuff due to crashes). I also wonder whether do people with decades of vim editor usage really have to attend to basic cursor movement?), but it’s not completely untrue, either.
The System Settings app seemed so incredibly hostile to keyboard navigation. I was able to start it, but tab only moves you in and out of the search window. From there, you can search for Bluetooth, but there seems no way to move from the left-hand menu tab the main contents. Within the main window, there are no buttons unless you hover with... a mouse, and no way to traverse the list via keyboard.
It'd be great to bring back some basic standards for how tab and arrow keys should aid in situations like this. I don't need them all the time, but they'd have saved me a real headache had they been there then.
The Mac once had zero ability to navigate a dialog without a mouse, other than Enter/Return to do the default button, and Cmd-period (later ESC once it appeared) for cancel). The original Mac also famously had no arrow keys because they were worried developers, if given arrows, would build (or port over) apps that were keyboard-first or which underused the mouse, and they needed the mouse to be a first-class citizen to make the platform truly differentiated.
Windows by contrast started out mouse-optional, so it never lost the keyboard functionality - it’s deeply rooted in the interface’s DNA.
Huh? All menus and dialogs on Mac are navigable by keyboard. I don't recall a time when they weren't.
Unfortunately none of the necessary keyboard shortcuts are actually called out in the UI (we long for the days of Keys! on OS9)
Also, dialogs? Open TextEdit. Hit ⌘-O for Open. Hit Tab. For me, default settings, that focuses the Search field. It doesn't visibly move the focus to any other control. After screwing with it for a while, it seems like if you hit Tab two times, nothing appears focused, but then if you use Up/Down arrows at that point, they are now able to select items on the sidebar, then another Tab moves focus to the main file browser, and from there the Search again, and now focus cycles between those three. But there's still no way to access any of the widgets up top. So, it's half-assed and undiscoverable.
Windows is regressing as well. Some of the modern UI stuff is impossible. Think it was good around windows 7 era and that was it.
Bonus points if you know how to alter the location of hint labels instead of the targets that the hints point to. I've found the controls for putting the targets essentially wherever I like, but the hint locations don't seem to be as customizable?
There is an extensive list of window managers, like Sway or I3, file managers like Vifm and Ranger and browsers like Luakit.
I used a logitech mx mouse with the palm shape or whatever it's called and I realized that it stopped me from putting more of my hand on the desk, pin pointing the pressure of my hand onto the mouse instead of the desk. What helped dramatically was getting a smaller mouse without that thumb/palm shape (the logitech M720 Triathlon), that distributed more of the pressure onto my desk and I haven't had an issue since.
I hope that helps for anyone having similar ergonomic issues!
However with a mouse that doesn't have the thumb support like the MX does, my thumb and left side of my (right) hand distributes more pressure along my hand and down to including my wrist so it distributes the pressure more evenly.
It's also not necessarily just pain but ergonomic uncomfortable in a way that was super distracting, like warning signs that if I kept it up then I'll eventually be in pain.
I use the pointer stick exclusively so don't have to reposition my hands on the keyboard like with a track pad, but the pointer stick does keep my hardware choice limited, currently a X1 Yoga. If Mouseless would be faster, then I could get a Framework (no pointer stick available).
I'd gladly pay the $50 for lifetime.
I've been using a "hamster" for some time now. Its top surface is a track pad - nice.
Even mouse-centric platforms like the Macintosh used to have fairly comprehensive keyboard navigation...
Mouseless – fast mouse control with the keyboard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42396336 - Dec 2024 (120 comments)
I have been trying out similar software for a few years but haven't seen one that would let me "click" outside the main monitor on Windows.
The author used a BlackBerry trackpad. In his blogpost he showed that it can be mounted on top of a keycap. I believe that you can 3d print a special keycap integrate directly with the trackpad.
setxkbmap -option keypad:pointerkeys
Also, not OSS but $49 for a lifetime license. I suppose that I could spend less on tokens to repro the idea for my private use. I like the idea.
Did anyone notice the use of the mouse at the end?
Homerow is like vimium but for your entire mac.
As someone on a mac trackpad right now, the only gesture I somewhat regularly use is drag-and-drop. Everything else I'd rather do on the keyboard.
I consider myself a "keyboard power user" if this is a thing anyway, and I really dig the home row thing (Vimmer for 20+ years now), but frankly having my hands on the keyboard ALL the time throughout the day is really tiring. So, I actually like my mouse for a change of posture, the cursor that I can follow with my eyes, etc.
P.S. I have to admit, though, that I love even more the interfaces that don't require a mouse in the first place. It's a shame we stopped adding well-thought tab stops in the UI and keyboards shortcuts are just a free-for-all in the apps.
Trackpoints are the best for don't-look-down.
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Like I can understand people with disabilities that makes sense so that’s not what I’m talking about
I’m talking about people who are actively choosing to be keyboard only, especially in extremely technical roles
Thanks for the suggestion.
:qa!