rhenium / thotkeys

A hotkey implementation for X11

thotkeys

A "transparent" hotkey implementation for X11 - thotkeys will not consume any keyboard events and they will be passed down to the focused window intact.

Typically, window managers implement a hotkey feature with GrabKey. A big problem with the approach is that activating a hotkey grabs the entire keyboard until the hotkey is released. This makes it impossible to accomplish a common request: "doing something while a hotkey is held down, while allowing applications to process other key input events".

thotkeys instead uses the X Input Device Extension to monitor key events directly from an input device, but not grab it.

Installation

$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

Usage

Monitor events:

$ ./thotkeys --monitor
# released key Return
--key Control_L # pressed key Control_L
--key Control_L --key Super_L # pressed key Super_L
--key Control_L --key Super_L --button 1 # pressed button 1
--key Control_L --key Super_L # released button 1
--key Control_L # released key Super_L
# released key Control_L

Register hotkeys:

$ ./thotkeys \
	--hotkey --key Control_L --key Super_L --button 1 \
	--on-press 'while :; do echo LCtrl+LWin+LClick is pressed; sleep 0.1; done'

$ # Registering multiple hotkeys
$ ./thotkeys \
	--hotkey --key Control_L --key m --on-press \
		'while :; do echo Ctrl+M is pressed; sleep 0.1; done' \
	--hotkey --key F11 --on-press \
		'while :; do echo F11 is pressed; sleep 0.1; done'

The program passed to --on-press is executed on a shell. The process will receive SIGTERM once the hotkey is released.

Limitations

• The hotkey is always global and it is currently not possible to enable or disable hotkeys conditionally.

• The current KeyCode <-> KeySym conversion is probably erroneous. How does it behave with a different keyboard layout, or when multiple keyboards are connected to the computer?

License

thotkeys is licensed under the MIT license. See also COPYING.