Karabiner-Elements updates 2024

Contents

• YouTube video
• If you like this, and want to support me
• Follow me on Twitter
• What is karabiner-elements and how to configure the mappings
• Install and configure Karabiner-Elements
• configure automatic typescript to json translation

YouTube video

If you like this, and want to support me

• This helps me to keep creating content and sharing it
• Share a tip here

Follow me on Twitter

• Or as kids call it these days “X”
• Here’s the link

What is karabiner-elements and how to configure the mappings

• Karabiner-elements is a powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS.

Install and configure Karabiner-Elements

• First you need to install it

brew install --cask karabiner-elements

• Open the karabiner-elements app
• Permissions window will popup, give the required permissions to both
  • karabiner_grabber
  • karabiner_observer
• I set up my mappings using the repo below
  • https://github.com/mxstbr/karabiner
  • This repo translates from manageable typescript code rules.ts (400 lines) to the karabiner configuration file karabiner.json (2500 lines)
  • Is this repo needed? No, but it’s way easier to manage the mappings
• Karabiner will automatically load the configuration we set up in the dotfiles video ~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json

configure automatic typescript to json translation

• All my mappings are statically configured at the moment, but you may not want to keep those, as I guess you’ll configure your own
  • So that’s what we’re doing below. Every time the rules.ts file is updated we want that those changes are automatically applied to the karabiner.json file, so we use the mxstbr repo we saw above
• So we install dependencies and run the build

# Make sure to change to the mxstbr project directory
cd ~/github/dotfiles-latest/karabiner/mxstbr

# Installs the project dependencies. These dependencies are usually defined
# in a package.json file in the root directory of the TypeScript project.
# This is a one-time setup step unless the dependencies change.
yarn install

# This runs the `scripts` section in the `package.json` file
# Compiles the TypeScript code into a karabiner.json file based on the rules.ts file
yarn run build

• Every time we make a change to the rules.ts file, we have to run the yarn run build command to translate the changes to the karabiner.json file but running the build command every time would be extremely annoying, so we run a watch command which will run the build automatically if changes occur

yarn run watch

• That’s a bit better, but we would have to manually run that watch command every time we are working with the mappings so that it applies the changes
• Instead, I want to run this watch command when the computer starts, so we have to create a LaunchAgent plist file

cat <<EOF >~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.linkarzu.karabiner.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.linkarzu.karabiner</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/opt/homebrew/bin/yarn</string>
      <string>run</string>
      <string>watch</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/karabiner_linkarzu.out.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/karabiner_linkarzu.err.log</string>
    <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
    <string>$HOME/github/dotfiles-latest/karabiner/mxstbr</string>
    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
    <dict>
      <key>PATH</key>
      <string>/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/homebrew/bin</string>
    </dict>
  </dict>
</plist>
EOF

• Notice the file was created

cat ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.linkarzu.karabiner.plist

• Now that the file is created, I need to run it
  • If you don’t get any warnings, that’s a good sign

launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.linkarzu.karabiner.plist

• Now I’ll modify the rules.ts file, and changes will be applied automatically
• Just leave this running and you should be good

---

• If for any reason, you need to unload or stop this plist from running, run the command below, but keep in mind that the changes wont be automatic anymore
• You can also delete the plist file if needed

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.linkarzu.karabiner.plist

---

• To see the error and log files we created below

cat /tmp/karabiner_linkarzu.out.log

cat /tmp/karabiner_linkarzu.err.log