CEceuk·Jun 14, 2026
I've been using kmonad[1] on my laptop for years which looks similar. Highly recommend it, it's brilliant.
[1] https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
In A key remapping daemon for Linuxkmonad
kmonad
Haskell2021–2026
kmonad / kmonad
kmonad
An advanced keyboard manager
23Distinct people
32Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
5.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
An advanced keyboard manager
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I love QMK, but IMO it's not so vital to have it now that there's a good alternative at the OS level: https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad#features
spindle used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- jtroo/kanata · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
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HN mentions by year32 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-06-08 04:20:00 UTC to 2026-06-14 08:54:12 UTC.
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Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 2 | 7 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
32 sourceshttps://github.com/kmonad/kmonad - An advanced keyboard manager
enjoy
In I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' KeysI have this set up using kmonad[1], and the following config. Many punctation marks are obviously missing, but I'm sure they could be added with a little thought. The mirrored layout is toggled by holding the space key.
(defalias
lhs (tap-next-release spc (layer-toggle ytrewq)))
(deflayer ytrewq
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
bspc 0 9 8 7 6 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ p o i u y _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ret ; l k j h _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
lsft / . , m n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _)
1. https://github.com/kmonad/kmon
Read the rest
Kmonad: An Advanced Keyboard Manager
1 points · Open discussionKMonad: An Advanced Keyboard Manager
3 points · Open discussionThere are probably many ways of doing it at software level, I would suggest either of these two cross-platform tools:
[1] https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
[2] https://github.com/jtroo/kanata
In Framework Laptop 16 Reviewhave you actually tried that? afaik they don't get you the perfect home row mods due to some limitations re. how they implement the tap vs hold logic
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad/issues/228
In Cursorless is alien magic from the futureThere are tools like kmonad (and I think some others), although they do require a kernel extension (or driver extension).
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad/blob/master/doc/installatio...
In Cursorless is alien magic from the futureKMonad – a keyboard manager with layers, multi-tap, tap-hold, and more
4 points · Open discussionI use kmonad[1] to have QMK-like functionality on any keyboard.
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
In The unix69 keyboard layout: nerdy and niceThere are several aspects to keyboard interfaces that the article does not catch:
- The physical device:
- The "key board": Keys that are aligned in straight lines are not aligned with your hands.
- The wrist bend affects people differently and can cause strains
- Physical design to lower wrist strain is an almost entirely separate research area than optimal keyboard layout.
- The optimal physical input device (in terms of input bandwidth) is hand-shaped but is more difficult to make.
- The layout:
- This article only discusses permutations of letters for increased bandwidth and less strain.
- Considering computer users can "easily" reach 80-120 wpm with QWERTY, speed is a moot point for non-competitioners.
- Few people learn a new layout and have a confirmation bias when they do; real usage data is scarce
Read the rest
.
Real-world experience differs slightly; e.g. I have more race conditions on Dvorak than on QWERTY because of left/right-hand speed differences. Dvorak does succeed at distributing consecutive letters between the hands, but I never had problems with accidental twiddles on QWERTY. Would you rather be fast or accurate? For most people, the trade-off is somewhere in the middle.
The layout is about much more than permutations of letters. Anyone who tried to or aspires to run Kmonad, Kanata, or Neo2 or who have a window manager with custom keybindings that control their environment, or who type with more than one kind of keyboard (e.g. pinyin, cyrillic, greek), or who need to type special unicode symbols that don't have a key combo in traditional layouts (math, emoji): The bar for keyboard input is higher, and I don't know any project that attempts to unify these. My "keyboard" is a combination of many open source tools, some of which work better than others, others have a steep learning curve, yet others are only documented in foreign languages.
[0]: https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
[1]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_(keyboard_layout)
[3]: https://www.neo-layout.org/
Kmonad is cross platform. https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad/
In Toward a more useful keyboardDelays are a terrible solution. Looking at key overlap percentage, for example, works much better. There are a lot of other ways to make dual-use/tap-hold functionality more reliability, but lots of programs actually implement overlap checks. The kaleidoscope keyboard firmware, for example, lets you configure a minimum overlap threshold for a key to start acting as its secondary role (e.g. only have space act as a modifier when it is pressed first and is held for 70% of the time the second key is pressed).
In your case, I'm not sure why you would need to roll over to other keys from escape. My shift key doubles as escape, and I don't use any delay or checks at all since I don't rapidly type escape then other keys. In any case, you could try configuring your capslock key to only act as control if it being held fully overlaps with the
Read the rest
next keypress. Not sure about keyd, but kmonad and kanata both support this (I'd highly recommend kanata). That may require changing how you type depending on the modifier, which is why more fine-grained overlap threshold checks can be useful.
Relevant github issues:
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad/issues/351
https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/issues/128
BTW creating really fancy keyboard layouts may be easier than you think: https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
In Making a keyboard layoutI can recommend kmonad for the same use cases full-heartedly.
With Linux, Windows, Mac support and nice docs.
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
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