skhd is a simple hotkey daemon for macOS. It is a stripped version of khd (although mostly rewritten from scratch), that sacrifices the more advanced features in favour of increased responsiveness and performance.
skhd is able to hotload its config file, meaning that hotkeys can be edited and updated live while skhd is running.
skhd has an improved parser that is able to accurately identify both the line and character position of any symbol that does not follow the correct grammar rules for defining a hotkey. If a syntax error is detected during parsing, the parser will print the error and abort. skhd will still continue to run and when the syntax error has been fixed, it will automatically reload and reparse the config file.
feature comparison between skhd and khd
| feature | skhd | khd |
|---|---|---|
| hotload config file | [x] | [ ] |
| require unix domain socket | [ ] | [x] |
| hotkey passthrough | [x] | [x] |
| modal hotkey-system | [ ] | [x] |
| app specific hotkey | [ ] | [x] |
| modifier only hotkey | [ ] | [x] |
| caps-lock as hotkey | [ ] | [x] |
| mouse-buttons as hotkey | [ ] | [x] |
| emit keypress | [ ] | [x] |
| autowrite text | [ ] | [x] |
Install
The first time skhd is ran, it will request access to the accessibility API.
After access has been granted, the application must be restarted.
Secure Keyboard Entry must be disabled for skhd to receive key-events.
Source:
Requires xcode-8 command-line tools,
make install # release version
make # debug version
Usage
-v | --version: Print version number to stdout
skhd -v
-c | --config: Specify location of config file
skhd -c ~/.skhdrc
Configuration
skhd will load the configuration file $HOME/.skhdrc, unless otherwise specified.
A list of all built-in modifier and literal keywords can be found here
See sample config for syntax information.