An intuitive approach to minimize finger movements on any keyboard:
- programmable or not
- any geometry: ANSI, ISO, ortholinear, split…
- any layout: QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ, Dvorak, Colemak, Ergo‑L…
Note
All releases have been moved to Ækeynox repositories (Kanata, QMK, ZMK). More details in the Installation section.
Table of contents:
Bring the keys to your fingers, rather than moving your fingers to the keys.
Not sure if you should buy that expensive ergonomic keyboard?
Download a ready-to-use Arsenik configuration for Kanata, and enjoy your regular features that were normally only accessible to a programmable keyboard.
Choose which Arsenik features to use from the following options:
On an ISO keyboard, it permutes the extra down-left key to ease the angle on your left wrist when touch typing. This makes any staggered keyboard almost ortholinear.
On an ANSI keyboard, the left Shift key becomes Z (“fat Z”). This supposes home row mods are enabled (see below).
On an ortholinear keyboard, you don’t want this option, obviously.
If you’re new to mod-taps, we suggest to start by adding the “layer-tap” option where only the thumbs are affected:
- the left thumb key remains a Cmd or Alt key when held, but emits a Backspace when tapped;
- the right thumb key brings the Symbols layer when held (in blue) — where all programming symbols are arranged for comfort and efficiency — and emits Return when tapped;
- the spacebar brings the Navigation layer when held (in orange).
Having Backspace and Enter under the thumbs is enough to reduce pinky fatigue very significantly. And using the Symbols and Navigation layers further reduces hand and finger movements.
When you are familiar with mod-taps, it’s time to enable them on the home row with the “HRM” variants:
- FDS and JKL become Alt, Ctrl, Super when held long enough;
- the left thumb key can now emit a Shift rather than Alt when held.
This is a very basic variant of the Miryoku principle: one layer on each thumb key, and symmetrical modifiers on the home row.
For the Symbols layer you can keep AltGr as-is. It is useful for keyboard layouts that rely heavily on the AltGr key.
But the real fun (especially for programmers) happens when we enable the “Lafayette” programming layer!
If enabled, in Symbols mode, pressing the left thumb key brings up the NumRow layer:
- all digits are on the home row, in the order you already know;
- the upper row helps with Shift-digit shortcuts;
- the lower row has dash, comma, dot and slash signs to help with number/date inputs
- Space becomes a narrow no-break space for layouts that support it.
Even on keyboards that do have a physical number row, this NumRow layer can
be interesting to use in order to further minimize finger movements.
A basic Navigation layer has an arrow cluster on the left hand to move around and a num pad on the right hand.
For those who like to move the cursor with HJKL in all apps with any keyboard layout, it is possible to enable a Vim-like Navigation layer.
It also has:
- super-comfortable Tab and Shift-Tab
- mouse emulation: previous/next and mouse scroll
This Navigation layer has a few empty slots on purpose, so you can add your own keys or layers.
NumPad and Fn lock these layers: they remain active without holding the key until escaped with Alt or AltGr.
NumPad layer toggled
Fn layer toggled
From there, you can edit the configuration to your liking, and even contribute to Arsenik!
The 300 ms delay before a key becomes a modifier has been chosen to be easy for beginners. Once used to mod-taps, you may want to reduce it so keyboard shortcuts can be done more quickly.
In the NumRow layer, you can edit the dk1 to dk5 shortcuts to put whatever seems useful to you: the numerous available keys are defined in the Kanata source code.
Note that Kanata can also use the laptop’s trackpoint buttons (e.g. on a ThinkPad) as two additional thumb keys. :-)
- Ækeynox-kanata for non-programmable keyboards
- Ækeynox-QMK for QMK keyboards
- Ækeynox-ZMK for ZMK keyboards
Arsenik can be installed as a configuration for your PC or Mac with Ækeynox-kanata (Windows, macOS, Linux). We recommend using:
- the angle-mod for laptop keyboards with a short spacebar (5u);
- the wide angle-mod for desktop keyboards with a long spacebar (6.25u or more).
This implementation used to be developed in this repository, but it’s been fully refactored, and it now lives in its own repository.
Ækeynox-kanata is the easiest way to adjust to compact keyboard layouts. It’s designed for a step-by-step approach, where every feature can be enabled one by one, until home row mods are finally mastered.
Kanata has been favored because for its features and active development, but other desktop implementations would be nice to see as well: KMonad, keyd, Karabiner….
Arsenik can be installed on most programmable keyboards:
- either “as is” on ANSI/ISO keyboards, or on ergonomic keyboards with a central space bar (Planck, Preonic, Reviung…);
- or with the Selenium variant, for split keyboards with at least two keys per thumb.
There are two implementations, Ækeynox-QMK and Ækeynox-ZMK, for QMK and ZMK keyboards, respectively. Both are actively maintained.
33 keys layout: the 33rd element of the periodic table.
Unlike Miryoku, which requires 6 thumb keys, Arsenik has been designed to work with standard ANSI/ISO/laptop keyboards, leveraging the spacebar and the two Alt/Cmd keys.