kb-remap

Tool to assist remapping macOS keyboard keys.

🚀 Getting started

Install the tool using Cargo.

sh cargo install kb-remap

🤸 Usage

Running the tool without any options will list the available HID devices. sh $ kb-remap --list ```text Vendor ID Product ID Name

0x0 0x0 BTM 0x0 0x0 Headset 0x4c 0x269 Magic Mouse 0x5ac 0x342 Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad 0x5ac 0x342 Keyboard Backlight 0xc45 0x7692 USB Keyboard 0x1050 0x407 YubiKey OTP+FIDO+CCID ```

Usually it's pretty simple to pick out which devices are keyboards. Using the name listed above as --name you can remap any key you want using the --map or --swap options. For example the following remaps capslock to backspace and swaps § (section) and (backtick) on a the internal macOS keyboard. ```sh $ kb-remap --name "Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad" --map capslock:delete --swap '0x64:' ```

You can reset the mapping using: sh $ kb-remap --name "Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad" --reset

The --map and --swap options both expect the source and destination keys to be specified and separated by a ":" (colon).

There are three ways to specify keys:

• Name: some keys you can specify using their name. For example the Return key "⏎" can be specified as "return". These are added on a convenience basis.
• Character: most typeable keys can be specified using their character. For example: the A key can be specified using "A" or "a".
• Number: any key can be specified by using the USB usage ID in decimal or hex. For example: Z has a usage ID of "29", which can also be specified as "0x1d".

If you want you can inspect the raw hidutil command that would be run for a particular command using the --dump option. $ kb-remap --name "Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad" --map capslock:delete --dump

Would output the following: hidutil property \ --matching '{"VendorID":1452,"ProductID":834}' \ --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":30064771129,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":30064771114}]}'

🤔 Why? How?

Powerful applications to remap macOS keys like [Karabiner-Elements] are often overkill for simple remappings. Additionally, they can sometimes take a while to support the latest macOS version. I wanted a simple reliable solution.

Instead of a constantly running application kb-remap simply subprocesses to the built-in macOS hidutil command to fetch keyboard information and to remap keys. This remapping does not persist if keyboards are unplugged or if your Mac goes to sleep. kb-remap does not solve this problem for you yet. One option is to install a launchd service to automatically run kb-remap.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.