Application aware layer switching 🔁 with kanata ⌨️ and sway 💨

Additional features:

Current layer text overlay

• Using sdl2 for rendering just text, is overkill
• Find a more lightweight alternative
• Is there any better way of showing current-layer information?
• Maybe some sway prompt using ipc?

TODO 📔

• Configuration

  • List of registered apps that have specific layers
    • Currently getting from file system (~/.config/keyboard/apps/*)
    • Get from config file?
  • Aliases and patterns for application names

• Refactor the code

• Don't rely on swaymsg, make universal

  • Now using swayipc
  • Make it work on other than sway?

• Whitelist/blacklist

• Make the overlay a compile time feature

• Fork kanata and apply the logging patches

How it works ⚙️

1. You have a main layer, this will be used by default.
2. You have a ~/.config/keyboard/apps/org.telegram.desktop layer. When telegram is focused it sends the window name (org.telegram.desktop in this case) to kanata. Kanata switches to this layer. NOTE: If it can't find the corresponding file in /apps it fallbacks to the default layer (main)

• Create a file and include it in your kanata configuration
  • NOTE: The name of the file should match what sway returns

Check out my kanata config for reference 💡

Dependencies

• SDL2 for the overlay window, optional (todo)

How to run 🏃

git clone https://github.com/veyxov/qanata
cd qanata/
cargo run -- --port 7070

Visualize statistics generated from kanata

python script for generating heatmap for key presses

How to run:

./run_stats.sh --file path/to/kanata/log

# Current format: actual_key_presses|layer|resulting_key_press

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Bugs 🐞

• Panics if there are no windows in current workspace (when the wallpaper is visible)
• Overheats the CPU when sway is locked; Fixed in commit

Caution: This is very experimental and raw. Needs a lot of work to make usable