kmonad does not emit any keypresses on MacOS

[chr-sa]

I am trying to use kmonad on an M1 MacBook Air, MacOS Version 12.2.1. After some googling I got stack to build the binary:

kmonad --version
0.4.1, commit ca616766a6ebf36e946c2e60dbc31e583b9f8e5f

Trying to launch the provided template for apple leaves my keyboard not doing anything on keypresses. Launching kmonad in debug mode yields:

sudo kmonad keymap/template/apple.kbd -l debug

Opening KeySink
Initializing Mac key sink
Opening KeySource
Opening IOKit devices
Launching process: emitter_proc
connected

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received event: Press <a>
Running hooks
Registering untimed hook: 1
Emitting: Press <a>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received event: Release <a>
Running hooks
Emitting: Release <a>

This seems fine to me, beside that there seems to be an a missing after Emitting: Press <a>.
I sadly have no idea how to diagnose this myself. If you need any further information I am happy to provide it.

[molleweide]

Yo! Have you turned on the kext/dext. See the macos installer instructions. I forgot to do that once and nothing happens then. I totally missed it in the docs at first but it is very important.

[chr-sa]

Hey, thanks for the reply. I totally forgot that this did not work and did not think about checking again. The activation fails because there is a newer version installed.

activation of org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice is requested
request of org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice is canceled because newer version (1.6.0) is already installed
request of org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice is failed with error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSSystemExtensionErrorDomain error 11.)

I tried using the uninstall instructions from the Karabiner-DriverKit but that failes as well:

bash '/Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice/scripts/uninstall/deactivate_driver.sh'
sudo bash '/Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice/scripts/uninstall/remove_files.sh'
button returned:OK
deactivation of org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice is requested
request of org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice is failed with error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSSystemExtensionErrorDomain error 4.)
Password:
No matching processes were found
rmdir: /Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/tmp/rootonly: Directory not empty
rmdir: /Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/tmp: Directory not empty
rmdir: /Library/Application Support/org.pqrs: Directory not empty

I also tried to install activate a newer version than 1.6.0, that failed with the exactly same message... I understand that this is not a problem with kmonad, but have you maybe stumbled across this as well?

Edit:
Even though prints that it fails, the command from the install instruction yields the right version:

defaults read /Applications/.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Manager.app/Contents/Info.plist CFBundleVersion                 
1.15.0

[molleweide]

Rm/disable the other dext versions. I dont remember more atm. (On mobile..)

[MuhammedZakir]

For activation command, try using forceActivate instead of activate.

Edit: I am not sure that's the correct cli arg. To get supported cli args, pass --help.

[chr-sa]

Thank you very much, it did work with forceActivate. Now everything works as expected.