jKeyboard

If you were a professional guitarist, wouldn't you play on a premium guitar?

If you were a chef, wouldn't you invest in a premium chef knife?

Well, as someone who types literally millions of keystrokes a year for my profession, I decided to invest in a premium keyboard by combining Karabiner-Elements with a customized WASD Keyboard. This repository contains the files for creating my custom keyboard:

The karabiner folder contains the json files for my Karabiner-Elements settings.
The wasd_files folder contains the Adobe Illustrator file used to make my customized WASD keyboard.

My Karabiner-Elements settings enable all sorts of keyboard modifications, including:

Use J / I / K / L as arrow keys for navigating the cursor and selecting text.
Create more convenient and comfortable shortcuts for common commands, like cut, copy, paste, delete, backspace, undo, redo, find, and escape.
Launch applications like Google Chrome or Terminal with a single hotkey.
Open Google Chrome to a webpage (e.g. gmail) with a single hotkey
Type my email send off ("Cheers, John") with a single hotkey.

Customized WASD Keyboard
Karabiner-Elements Settings
Example json Settings
License

Customized WASD Keyboard

My WASD keyboard looks like this:

All I did to create this was edit the Adobe Illustrator keyboard file (./wasd_files/keyboard_layout_104.ai). In addition to adding a bunch of customized icons (e.g. the function keys), I changed the caps lock key to a blue hyper key that when held down (with the help of Karabiner-Elements) essentially creates another keyboard with an entirely different functionality (indicated by the small blue icons in the lower-right corners of each key).

For those curious, the Chinese text on the spacebar is the idiom "晴耕雨读", which literally means "Sunny farm rain read." The meaning is to farm on sunny days and read on rainy days. In other words, work hard, life a simple life, and enjoy each present moment.

Karabiner-Elements Settings

The Karabiner-Elements json settings are found in ./karabiner/jKeyboard.json. These particular settings include three separate "profiles" that you can select in the Karabiner preference window: 1) jKeyboard-Apple, 2) jKeyboard-WASD, and 3) jKeyboard-CM. The main profile is "jKeyboard-Apple," which is configured for a standard Apple keyboard and includes all the settings described on this page. The other two profiles have additional functionality that is specific to my WASD keyboard and another keyboard by Cooler Master, which I use on different Mac machines.

Installation (mac)

Download Karabiner-Elements and Install.
Open the karabiner.json configuration file. To find it, open Terminal.app and type open ~/.config, which will open the hidden .config directory in a new Finder window. There you can navigate to karabiner/karabiner.json and open/edit that file.
Copy-paste the settings in one of the json files in the ./karabiner/ folder in this repo to overwrite the default karabiner.json file.

Caps_lock Keyboard

One of the primary things my jKeyboard settings does is modify the caps lock key such that when held down it essentially creates another keyboard with an entirely different functionality. Here is a summary of the current settings:

Navigation

Key Combination	Maps to	Description
`caps lock`	Nothing	Trigger for "hyper" keyboard
`caps lock` + `J` / `I` / `K` / `L`	`←` / `↑` / `↓` / `→`	Arrow Keys
`caps lock` + `command` + `I` / `K`	`command` + `↑` / `↓`	Home / End
`caps lock` + `command` + `J` / `L`	`command` + `←` / `→`	Go to Start / End of Line
`caps lock` + `U` / `O`	`command` + `←` / `→`	Go to Start / End of Line
`caps lock` + `spacebar`	`control`	Control key
`caps lock` + `spacebar` + `I` / `K`	`⇞` / `⇟`	Page Up / Page Down
`caps lock` + `spacebar` + `J` / `L`	`control` + `←` / `→`	Go to Start / End of Next Word

Selecting Text

Key Combination	Maps to	Description
`caps lock` + `A`	`shift`	Shift key
`caps lock` + `A` + `J` / `I` / `K` / `L`	`shift` + `←` / `↑` / `↓` / `→`	Select Text
`caps lock` + `A` + `command` + `I` / `K`	`command` + `shift` + `↑` / `↓`	Select all to top / bottom
`caps lock` + `A` + `command` + `J` / `L`	`command` + `shift` + `←` / `→`	Select until Start / End of Line
`caps lock` + `A` + `U` / `O`	`command` + `shift` + `←` / `→`	Select until Start / End of Line
`caps lock` + `A` + `,` / `.`	`control` + `shift` + `←` / `→`	Select until Start / End of Next Word
`caps lock` + `A` + `[` / `]`	`option` + `shift` + `↑` / `↓`	Select until Start / End of Paragraph

Common Shortcuts

Key Combination	Maps to	Description
`caps lock` + `N`	`backspace`	Backspace / Delete
`caps lock` + `H`	`del`	Forward Delete
`caps lock` + `S`	`command` + `X`	Cut
`caps lock` + `D`	`command` + `C`	Copy
`caps lock` + `F`	`command` + `V`	Paste
`caps lock` + `R`	`command` + `Z`	Undo
`caps lock` + `T`	`command` + `Y`	Redo
`caps lock` + `M`	`command` + `F`	Find
`caps lock` + `.`	`command` + `G`	Find Next
`caps lock` + `,`	`command` + `shift` + `G`	Find Previous
`caps lock` + `E`	`Esc`	Escape

Other Shortcuts

Key Combination	Action
`caps lock` + `C`	Open `Google Chrome`
`caps lock` + `Z`	Open the file `'foo.txt'` in my Dropbox Folder
`caps lock` + `Quote (')`	Open my `Dropbox` folder
`caps lock` + `/`	Open my `Downloads` folder
`caps lock` + `P`	Open my `pCloud Drive` folder
`caps lock` + `A` + `P`	Open my `pCloud Sync` folder
`caps lock` + `8`	Open `Terminal`
`caps lock` + `2`	`command` + `control` + `2` (my Sublime Text shortcut to split into two windows)
`caps lock` + `G`	Type my email send off ("`Cheers, John`")
`caps lock` + `Y`	`control` + `Y` (my Sublime Text shortcut to send selected text to a REPL)
`caps lock` + `9`	`control` + `9` (my Sublime Text shortcut to shift focus to the LEFT panel)
`caps lock` + `0`	`control` + `0` (my Sublime Text shortcut to shift focus to the RIGHT panel)

Custom Function Keys

I also changed my function keys to do certain things. While f1 to f4 and f10 to f12 are the standard mac settings, the keys f5 to f8 open specific web pages, and f9 takes a screen shot:

Key	Action
`f1`	Brightness Decrease
`f2`	Brightness Increase
`f3`	Mission Control
`f4`	Dashboard
`f5`	Open `Gmail` in Google Chrome
`f6`	Open `Google Calendar` in Google Chrome
`f7`	Open `Facebook` in Google Chrome
`f8`	Open `Intellicast Weather` in Google Chrome
`f9`	`command` + `shift` + `3` (Save screen shot to Desktop)
`f10`	Mute
`f11`	Volume Decrease
`f12`	Volume Increase

Other Commands

These are a few other tricks that I find particularly useful:

Key	Action
Tap `Left shift`	`(`
Tap `Right shift`	`)`
Hold `Esc`	`command` + `W` (Close Window)

Example json Settings

I learned a lot about how to write json settings to get Karabiner-Elements to do different things. I included the following examples in the ./karabiner/json_examples folder.

File	Description
caps_lock_arrows.json	Hold the `caps lock` key to turn the `J` / `I` / `K` / `L` keys into the `←` / `↑` / `↓` / `→` keys
launch_application.json	Launch an Application (in this case Google Chrome) by typing `right option` + `C`
open_browser_to_page.json	Open Google Chrome to www.google.com by typing `right option` + `C`
tap_shift_keys_for_parentheses.json	Tap `left_shift` / `right_shift` to get `(` / `)`

License

GPL-3

📣 Shout-out to @jasonrudolph, @Vonng, and the Karabiner Vi Mode Setting for inspiration - I learned a lot by copying a lot of their json code!

jhelvy/jKeyboard