9 ms·

Mouseless – keyboard-driven control of macOS/Linux/Windows

• tonyrice 4mo ago
  I was literally just thinking about the desire to have a mouseless keyboard solution yesterday.
• CalRobert 4mo ago
  Wow, as cool as this is, it's kind of a shame that we need to say "use coords to show where the mouse should click" instead of designing interfaces that keep pointing-device-free users in mind.
  • Someone1234 4mo ago
    With Windows in particular, you absolutely can navigate Windows + Office keyboard only. I do it every day. Now, third party software, is always going to be all over the place. Stuff that was largely built on Win32 components works fine, but "modern" stylized applications rarely have strong support.
    • varun_ch 4mo ago
      You’re right that lots of Windows apps were designed with Keyboard only workflows in mind. It’s a shame that MacOS has so many points where if you don’t have a mouse you’re out of luck. There is one major improvement you can do on Mac, at least for menus: https://varun.ch/posts/macos-keyboard/ https://varun.ch/posts/macos-keyboard/
      • comboy 4mo ago
        Obviously depends on your workflow but I think I use mouse only on websites on macos (with aerospace)
        • jonfw 4mo ago
          If you're interested in keyboard navigation of websites, consider a browser or extension with link hinting support! It worked really well in my experience a few years ago, although I've since became much more of a mouse guy and stopped using it. Qutebrowser was my favorite browser for keyboard navigation but firefox, chrome, etc. have extensions for this as well.
          • reddit_clone 4mo ago
            Vimium extension does that. Works well too. Works on Chrome and Firefox.
            • Galus 4mo ago
              try out surfingkeys if vimmium isnt ur cup of tea
              • reddit_clone 4mo ago
                I am currently trying something called ShortCat, this is not just for the browser but works in other Mac applications too! Look Ma, No mouse !
          • Barbing 4mo ago
            Link hinting - love it
      • mikestew 4mo ago
        Like the linked article says, every time I set up a new Mac, I’m annoyed that this isn’t the default.
        • philistine 4mo ago
          I get that this might annoy you, but there is a direct trace all the way back to the original Mac in 1984 that required a mouse. As time went on and the two other OSes we still have gained mouse support (Windows, Linux) from their keyboard roots, they brought forward their ethos of keyboard navigation. Mac OS resolutely stayed attached to its mouse only roots.
          • kid64 4mo ago
            “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” Well Tim, I suppose the blind do outnumber the handless.
            • devinprater 4mo ago
              Can confirm.
          • layer8 4mo ago
            It was a significant downside of MacOS from the beginning, and it still is.
            • someguyiguess 4mo ago
              That seems incredibly subjective. For people with carpal tunnel like myself, having to do everything on the keyboard can be very painful. The mouse alleviates that and gives visual feedback.
              • bigyabai 4mo ago
                That's a good reason to support the mouse as a backup peripheral, but not a good reason to gimp keyboards in your interface. Seeing as both can be accommodated, I would argue it's an objective limitation of macOS.
    • graemep 4mo ago
      Most things in Linux too - all DEs I have tried have lots of keyboard shortcuts and so do a lot of applications. The problem is that they are less discoverable and you need to make and effort to get used to using them instead of point and click.
      • CalRobert 4mo ago
        They used to be discoverable with mnemonics (underlined letters) but those have been dead nearly thirty years…
        • p-t 4mo ago
          these still exist on windows though? you just hold alt
          • MarsIronPI 4mo ago
            GTK (and QT I do believe) also support this on GNU/Linux.
          • foobarbecue 4mo ago
            Only works for like 20% of the menus though. I remember alt shortcuts reliably being on every single menu in early Windows (95? ME? XP?)
            • CalRobert 4mo ago
              Hah, I was thinking 3.1…
              • foobarbecue 4mo ago
                Yeah I only used it a little bit so couldn't remember if it had the "hold alt to see shortcuts" thing
            • thewebguyd 4mo ago
              They died when people stopped using native toolkits and started making everything an electron app. Economics be damned, if you're going to make a native app, use the OS provided toolkits.
    • stronglikedan 4mo ago
      I just wish the shortcuts between the OS and Office were consistent. Most are, but some of the more commonly used ones aren't.
    • varenc 4mo ago
      On macOS with "Full Keyboard Control" you can navigate the system and most any official app from the keyboard. It's not an efficient experience though.
    • teo_zero 4mo ago
      > you absolutely can navigate Windows + Office keyboard only Unfortunately in Excel many operations can be done only with the function keys (e.g. F2, Shift-F8). I'd argue that leaving the center of the keyboard to press the function keys is not easier or quicker than reaching for the mouse.
  • flux3125 4mo ago
    I'm curious if there's a program that uses a simple detection model for UX components to locate clickable areas. This would allow for global navigation similar to VimiumC
    • tcoff91 4mo ago
      https://www.homerow.com/ https://www.homerow.com/ Been using this for years.
      • flux3125 4mo ago
        Sorry, I forgot to add "on Linux" at the end. Still, that's a nice one!
      • tmvphil 4mo ago
        Wow, how I have I never heard of this, this seems like a way better model than mouseless
  • stronglikedan 4mo ago
    > interfaces that keep pointing-device-free users There's plenty of TUIs for the dozens of you to use.
  • CTDOCodebases 4mo ago
    A tiled window manager with Qutebrowser and it's vimium style shortcuts is the closest I have come to this.
    • davidwest26 4mo ago
      I just hit tab 1 to N times and hope for the best. I wonder if VIM style search on elements with a new HTML tag attribute would work (at least for browsers).
      • CTDOCodebases 4mo ago
        Wait until you hear about tab+shift. It would be great if they built Vim style shortcuts into the spec and browser like you suggested but in the time being we have the Vimium extensions for other browsers. Personally I am not a fan of extensions unless I write them myself.
  • dfxm12 4mo ago
    I think it's ok that hardware and software are designed with the 99% in mind. After that you probably run into competing interests/trade-offs anyway (a system built for ergonomics probably looks different from a system built for speed).
    • reaperducer 4mo ago
      I think it's ok that hardware and software are designed with the 99% in mind. That's called mob rule. We don't act like cavemen anymore. We build entire civilizations to prevent that sort of thing. You may have read in a history book once "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." The word "all" is important.
  • angiolillo 4mo ago
    > designing interfaces that keep pointing-device-free users in mind. Agreed. Using keyboard keys to emulate a mouse cursor seems like it ought to be a last resort for graphical applications that lack proper accessibility affordances. Contrast that with command palettes, accessibility controls, syntax tree navigation, and other approaches that rely on the names, content, and document structure that users already know rather than a special mode that displays two letter codes that must be read each time or memorized. Many of these other approaches also allow users to activate buttons, menu items, and links that are outside the current viewport or hidden in menus which reduces the overall number of "clicks" required to perform those actions. The downside is that they can take longer to type than a two-letter code. Still, my guess is that for most people it would be overall more efficient to optimize for cognitive load than pure speed. (Though in the long run, I suspect that improvements in eye-tracking will lead to hybrid systems that are both lower cognitive load and faster than any of these.)
  • deafpolygon 4mo ago
    I think the controller interfaces for FFXIV is worth a study in this. They designed an interface that is workable for an MMORPG with both mouse and controller (in this case, the controller can act as a proxy for our keyboard).
  • NooneAtAll3 4mo ago
    if anything, I'd want LESS keyboard controls more GUI, more visibility!
  • nine_k 4mo ago
    But that's the point for me. Unlike e.g. Vimium, this thing is not limited to clicking clicky things, but allows to imitate nearly arbitrary mouse movements, very quickly. There are cases when it's important.
• starquake 4mo ago
  Using closed source software to drive my OS doesn't sound that appealing to me.
  • applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
    Then don't buy it. Not everything in the world needs to be made free just for you.
    • jrm4 4mo ago
      Nah, this is a very good point; I've seen things similar to this in the past and it's a cool idea -- but "subscription modeling" every little tool is not a good path to keep going down. Free and open source is important and it's perfectly fine to be critical here.
      • ahmd-sh 4mo ago
        i bought it for like 4 bucks several months ago. for the price (and subscription tier) i'm seeing now, i wouldn't say it's worth it.
      • applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
        Demanding everything be free and open source is important if you don't want independent developers to be able to make a living, and instead wish to create a world where the vast majority of software is controlled by big tech, who are the benefactors of "free" software. The less you're willing to pay people making good software, the more territory predatory ad/tracking-fueled "free" software gets. The more territory you give them, the more they're going to buy out open source software to destroy. We see this happening more and more recently, with uv, bun, vite etc. being bought out - if they can't put food on the table, they will sell out to monopolists. I agree that I would never pay a subscription fee for any kind of system functionality, but there is a lifetime purchase option available, so there is no grounds to critique that here. Having extra payments models available in addition to a regular purchase model does not make a product worse.
• nashashmi 4mo ago
  Vimium for the browser solves most of the mouse needs. I dont see it helping with drawings. Did anyone notice the use of the mouse at the end?
  • tcoff91 4mo ago
    https://www.homerow.com/ https://www.homerow.com/ Homerow is like vimium but for your entire mac.
  • utopiah 4mo ago
    Indeed or https://tridactyl.xyz https://tridactyl.xyz
    • MarsIronPI 4mo ago
      VimFX + LegacyFox is still the best; it even works on about: pages.
• alan_zero 4mo ago
  Opensource alternatives: - https://github.com/moverest/wl-kbptr https://github.com/moverest/wl-kbptr - https://github.com/petoncle/mousemaster https://github.com/petoncle/mousemaster - https://github.com/y3owk1n/neru https://github.com/y3owk1n/neru - https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot https://github.com/mjrusso/scoot - https://github.com/jbensmann/mouseless https://github.com/jbensmann/mouseless - https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd (not really maintained anymore)
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • ColdPlox 4mo ago
    Another new one is stochos: https://github.com/museslabs/stochos https://github.com/museslabs/stochos Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors/maintainers.
  • Lalabadie 4mo ago
    Shortcat is the one I found I was willing to adopt without much effort: https://shortcat.app https://shortcat.app
  • lolive 4mo ago
    warpd, properly configured, was working perfectly for me. until i realized i 99% needed it for web surfing. so i switched to kinkHints in firefox, which is covering my link clicking need.
  • scottlamb 4mo ago
    > https://github.com/y3owk1n/neru https://github.com/y3owk1n/neru ...which supports Vimium-style hints mode as well as the grid-based approach shown in this "Mouseless (app) explained in 80 seconds" video. It also has a very responsive maintainer. Personally I like vimium's approach much better than the grid. Unfortunately not everything has a good accessibility tree (Zed sadly doesn't), but I just realized loading neru's page that I'm behind in versions. I haven't tried the "Native Vision OCR" addition to hints mode yet. I also like having a trackpad right on the keyboard (using a SoflePLUS2 right now though I'm not totally sold on column stagger). Then I can use a real pointing device with only a slight movement of one hand. In the Mouseless video, the creator has tried to minimize the distance by putting the mouse between the halves of his keyboard, but I think he's both compromised the keyboard position to ease using the mouse (arms wide and parallel with wrists turned inward rather than arms converging toward a more splayed keyboard with somewhat closer halves, untented to minimize vertical separation compared to the mouse) and might have an uncomfortably small mousepad to avoid doing this even more. Not a compromise I'd want to make.
• yoavm 4mo ago
  Looks kinda similar to https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd/ https://github.com/rvaiya/warpd/ , which is open source and free software. Always worked very well for me on Wayland, but seems to be working on Xorg and macOS as well.
• segmondy 4mo ago
  Pretty cool, would have been great before the trackpad.
• chernoby 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  • therealfigtree 4mo ago
    At least your are living a fulfilling life ridiculing others, that is awesome. /s
• docheinestages 4mo ago
  This is a helpful method for visually grounding LLMs to take actions on the screen such as clicking. For humans though, hell no.
• voidUpdate 4mo ago
  Or you could use tab, arrow keys, page up/down, enter...
  • Neil44 4mo ago
    That's OK in menus and the OS in general but if you're working on a web app or big form tabbing through it can be a PITA.
    • voidUpdate 4mo ago
      If you have a big form to fill in, surely its going to take longer to type in the coordinates of each text box and get the mouse to click them rather than just hitting tab to select the next input element?
    • utopiah 4mo ago
      Let me introduce you to https://tridactyl.xyz https://tridactyl.xyz
  • ptaffs 4mo ago
    well, you should be able to, at the OS level use only keyboard shortcuts. Windows once was great with tab, enter, escape, but browsers make things more complicated than dialog boxes, and MacOS really isn't good at keyboard shortcuts. I would prefer the solution was not Mouseless and the others, but no mouse.
• ahmd-sh 4mo ago
  i use this! it actually comes in handy when i'm too lazy to move my hands from my keyboard. on my ultrawide, the click zones are larger and easier to digest/hit.
• 0dayman 4mo ago
  [dead]
• tcoff91 4mo ago
  I think I prefer the approach that Homerow uses: https://www.homerow.com/ https://www.homerow.com/ It's like vimium but for your entire mac. It hooks into the macOS accessibility APIs.
  • stronglikedan 4mo ago
    lol, it's Vimium for the OS! that's pretty cool
• marksully 4mo ago
  Anyone interested in this should really try out Homerow (https://www.homerow.app https://www.homerow.app) (not affiliated, just a happy user for years now)
  • hootz 4mo ago
    But that is Mac only.
  • deviation 4mo ago
    How do you handle apps that don't have great accessibility support? Hell - after installing, it shows a slider to help adjust the label size of each element - but I can't slide it because (surprise) Homerow doesn't support horizontal slider elements like this. I also can't highlight text on the screen etc. Struggling to find a usecase for Homerow that isn't just navigating chrome or my filesystem.
  • soupspaces 4mo ago
    https://gitHub.com/AlfredoSequeida/hints https://gitHub.com/AlfredoSequeida/hints
• kittikitti 4mo ago
  Waiting for the AutoHotKey or AHK with an LLM, GUI automation, and screenshots. Someone else develop it because it will be ignored if I do it.
• arkt8 4mo ago
  saying it is for Linux made me think it would be open source as there are already lot of things people can do without mouse... There is an extensive list of window managers, like Sway or I3, file managers like Vifm and Ranger and browsers like Luakit.
• da-x 4mo ago
  Thanks, but I'm too old to switch - will wait for the Neuralink implant.
• reconquestio 4mo ago
  Keynav – retire your mouse (2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945936 Wayland port: https://github.com/kovetskiy/waynav https://github.com/kovetskiy/waynav
  • johanvts 4mo ago
    Windows version: https://github.com/lesderid/keynavish https://github.com/lesderid/keynavish
  • bradrn 4mo ago
    I like wl-kbptr myself: https://github.com/moverest/wl-kbptr https://github.com/moverest/wl-kbptr
    • Barbing 4mo ago
      Great demo videos. Very intelligent selection methods.
• natsucks 4mo ago
  you know what's efficient? controlling a computer with one hand rather than two.
  • lightedman 4mo ago
    Sure, you can play with yourself and scroll porn that way. I don't know if I'd call that efficiency.
    • natsucks 4mo ago
      i spent more than year with ergo split keyboards, home row mods, layers, etc. Mouse + speech-to-text + agents made it irrelevant.
• NickNaraghi 4mo ago
  If you wanted to go in the other direction, you could achieve more productivity with faster mouse skills. The competitive FPS genre has spawned a bunch of aim training tools[0] to improve muscle memory. [0] https://www.3daimtrainer.com/ https://www.3daimtrainer.com/
  • stronglikedan 4mo ago
    RIP my hand by RSI
    • strogonoff 4mo ago
      A few months ago I switched to a vertical mouse and can’t recommend it enough.
      • haolez 4mo ago
        I couldn't adapt to the fact that, when I click, I have to be mindful of not moving the mouse sideways with the right amount of finger pressure.
        • strogonoff 4mo ago
          I quickly got used to mine. It’s not exactly at a 90 degree angle to the desk, the finger pushes about as much down as to the side, and since it’s a natural pinching gesture the thumb on the other side stops any remaining horizontal force. Just find a mouse that has a good design, I’ve seen some I could never use.
      • altmanaltman 4mo ago
        I recently tried it but my muscle memory just refused to cope. I used to do a lot of competitve fps gaming and its hard to imagine a different way to hold a house. I do use a kineses ergonomic keyboard though but adapting to that felt much more normal than the mouse stuff idk why
  • url00 4mo ago
• big85 4mo ago
  Amiga Workbench could be used mouseless by using key combinations to move the mouse around. It was cumbersome, but just good enough to let you use the system if your mouse was broken, or you had plugged a second joystick into the mouse port and couldn't be bothered swapping them to launch a game. Later there were add-ons like Reqtools and MCP which let you use keys more, e.g. Escape to close a window, or Return (Enter) to hit OK on a dialog box.
• notlibrary 4mo ago
  :qa!
• alentred 4mo ago
  Sometimes when I am too tired, I lean back in my chair and click through Hacker News or something similar. I use Vimium in my browser and HN is great to navigate with it, but that's the not the point - the whole point is I don't want to sit above my keyboard with my hands on the home row. I consider myself a "keyboard power user" if this is a thing anyway, and I really dig the home row thing (Vimmer for 20+ years now), but frankly having my hands on the keyboard ALL the time throughout the day is really tiring. So, I actually like my mouse for a change of posture, the cursor that I can follow with my eyes, etc. P.S. I have to admit, though, that I love even more the interfaces that don't require a mouse in the first place. It's a shame we stopped adding well-thought tab stops in the UI and keyboards shortcuts are just a free-for-all in the apps.
• sirwitti 4mo ago
  Has anyone real-life experience with these tools?
  • bobchadwick 4mo ago
    Committed Mouseless user, here. I use a split keyboard that has a mouse layer, but I almost never use it, let alone an actual mouse or trackpad. Mouseless is so much more efficient for me. It did take a day or two to get used to using it (and to get used to comments from people who see your screen when it's active).
    • sirwitti 4mo ago
      Thank you! That's exactly what I wanted to hear :)
    • elxr 4mo ago
      One to two days only? Might have to try it out then. Thanks for the suggestion.
• dirkc 4mo ago
  There is something to be said for the split mechanical keyboard in the demonstration video and the sound the switches make when 'moving the mouse'.
• 0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
  This just made me realize my desktop monitor needs to be a touchscreen
• bflesch 4mo ago
  I was trying to scroll with mouse wheel but the website did not react at all. Then it started scrolling with 1 frame per second.
• spacemonkey92 4mo ago
  When I first tried OpenAI’s Atlas browser, I found it incredibly slow at moving the mouse. This could be a perfect use case for agents that need computer use.
• jwpapi 4mo ago
  Does anyone use a trackpoint and has still compared to this? I get it’s faster then reaching to mouse, but faster then trackpoint?
• Umairq786 4mo ago
  good one
• freedomben 4mo ago
  I've had "mouseless" on every system since getting a keyboard that supports it (in my case the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard). It's changed my compute experience and I can never go back (so I hope they don't go out of business)
• NateEag 4mo ago
  I prefer ShortCat's model: https://shortcat.app/ https://shortcat.app/ Similar to Vimium, but for the whole OS. Apparently Homerow is similar, judging from comments I'm seeing here. I really wish I knew an equivalent for Linux. I might even leave Gnome behind if a different DE has a good model for this.
  • khutorni 4mo ago
    ShortCat has a beautiful slogan: "Manipulate macOS masterfully, minus the mouse."
    • nine_k 4mo ago
      The picture shows it nicely, too. (But I bet that most Macbook users don't even use a mouse.)
  • bobchadwick 4mo ago
    I used to use (and love) ShortCat, but it got too slow on my ancient MacBook Pro. I switched to Mouseless, and I actually prefer it now.
    • jmarcher 4mo ago
      Yeah, I tried on an Intel MBP years ago when it was first launched. It was super slow, and I disregarded it. I just gave it a try on an M4 Pro; it's not instantaneous like Vimmium, but it is usable. I am sold!
  • zuzululu 4mo ago
    This is purrrfect ;) I've been looking for something like this
  • turtlebits 4mo ago
    I like shortcat, but it's slow, even on a modern Mac. Also, I'm not sure the dynamic nature of the hotkeys is a good thing. I could imagine if you use Mouseless for a long period of time, muscle memory might prevail as screen locations map to the same set of keys.
• ElijahLynn 4mo ago
  I'm on Linux and totally going to give this a try. I switched from multiple monitors years ago to just a laptop and am in permanent portable mode. I use the pointer stick exclusively so don't have to reposition my hands on the keyboard like with a track pad, but the pointer stick does keep my hardware choice limited, currently a X1 Yoga. If Mouseless would be faster, then I could get a Framework (no pointer stick available). I'd gladly pay the $50 for lifetime.
• andix 4mo ago
  I still have a keyboard with a track point I don't understand why they are not popular at all and only a few manufacturers build them. It doesn't replace a mouse for me, but the track point is between the G H B keys and can be reached without moving the fingers away from the typing position. So it's great for some simple mouse commands.
  • glitchc 4mo ago
    The trackpoint is the main reason I find it so hard to move away from Lenovo Thinkpads. The buttons under the spacebar alone are super convenient.
    • andix 4mo ago
      There is at least a whole line up of models from Lenovo. But for keyboards there is currently only tex.com.tw that sells new keyboards with track point.
    • nazgulsenpai 4mo ago
      This. When I use my work laptop, I find myself pressing the spacebar constantly. edit: instead of "clicking"
    • wnolens 4mo ago
      As an old user of thinkpads for years, on a Macbook the trackpad is as much under your thumb as the trackpoint is under your index finger and I find the trackpad far more accurate and less strain to use. In fact, my work-at-home setup is macbook pro, open face so i can use the keyboard+trackpad but external monitor so my posture isn't terrible.
    • Liskni_si 4mo ago
      Not just hard - impossible. To the point of making it harder to find a job, as very few jobs let you use a non-Windows ThinkPad. (I mean yeah, of course AuDHD makes it harder to find a job, no surprise there. But it's a shame that laptop manufacturers make it even harder.)
• sundar_p 4mo ago
  Some existing similar tools for those who might be curious. For vim, there's easymotion or hop.nvim. For tmux, there's Morantron/tmux-fingers. For Chrome, there's Vimium. You can also flash your keyboard to have mouse controls (https://docs.qmk.fm/features/mouse_keys https://docs.qmk.fm/features/mouse_keys).
  • frimmy 4mo ago
    :bow: thanks!
  • blauditore 4mo ago
    Huh, people use the mouse with vim? Or am I missing something?
    • siddboots 4mo ago
      For Vim it isn’t replacing mouse necessarily. It’s giving you another way to navigate the cursor around the buffer by giving you absolute references rather than relative motions.
• spamjavalin 4mo ago
  nice - stick that video in the header
• doug_durham 4mo ago
  I use a trackpad to avoid virtually all of the issues created by a mouse. The trackpad gestures in macOS are magical.
  • allthetime 4mo ago
    I have a small Logitech laser mouse with a few auxiliary buttons, horizontal click scroll, and an unlock able wheel for fast scrolling. One button opens up workspace view (four fingers up), side scroll switches between works spaces (four fingers sideways). When my laptop is setup on my desk at home with monitor and keyboard attached this is much more comfortable and efficient than using the track pad. That’s said, MacBook track pads are magic.
  • AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
    What are the issues that a mouse creates?
    • oofbaroomf 4mo ago
      Takes time to move your hand to it.
    • doug_durham 4mo ago
      I have to lift up my hand and move my arm around to use it. With a trackpad all I need to do is move my hand over and flick my fingers for gestures. My wrist never moves.
      • elxr 4mo ago
        Wait till you hear about a trackpoint. To bad almost nothing comes with one anymore. As someone on a mac trackpad right now, the only gesture I somewhat regularly use is drag-and-drop. Everything else I'd rather do on the keyboard.
• AndrewKemendo 4mo ago
  Can someone who hates/chooses not to use a mouse please explain to me why. Like I can understand people with disabilities that makes sense so that’s not what I’m talking about I’m talking about people who are actively choosing to be keyboard only, especially in extremely technical roles
• huydotnet 4mo ago
  I've been building the same thing for a while https://github.com/huytd/octocmd https://github.com/huytd/octocmd It has everything you need to throw away the mouse: keyboard tab switching, search and click, vim-style clicking, keyboard scrolling.
• alxfrnr 4mo ago
  For a total opposite tool, there is mousemux (Windows only). You can get multiple mice on the same machine and you can attach a keyboard to each and lock it to a window or a screen.
  • sneurlax 4mo ago
    Whoa! Now that's interesting! I wonder if that would be possible on other OSes...
    • salmonik 4mo ago
      It can be done on Linux with X11 using xinput.
• douglaswlance 4mo ago
  doesnt work with multiple monitors
  • ardim 4mo ago
    just in case you didnt know, theres a kb shortcut to switch the overlay to the next/previous monitor.
• ardim 4mo ago
  fwiw Ive been using mouseless for a while now and I've been enjoying it! I like how i can remember the regions on the screen and the hotkeys are consistent. I also like that it makes the whole screen clickable not just what the app is able to recognize as a button.
• shellback3 4mo ago
  Wow, this brings back the memories of a Byte (I think it was Byte) article about how a person used this strange thing (don't know if it was called "mouse" yet) to keep on working after his keyboard died. I've been using a "hamster" for some time now. Its top surface is a track pad - nice.
• magios 4mo ago
  i3wm with bindings in config to use xdotool to move and click the mouse is what i use.
• digitaltrees 4mo ago
  I’ve never seen anything like this. Really cool to see a UX that is totally novel.
• JeremyJaydan 4mo ago
  I've tried to use software like this and it looks awesome but it wasn't ultimately the solve for me when it comes to ergonomics. I used a logitech mx mouse with the palm shape or whatever it's called and I realized that it stopped me from putting more of my hand on the desk, pin pointing the pressure of my hand onto the mouse instead of the desk. What helped dramatically was getting a smaller mouse without that thumb/palm shape (the logitech M720 Triathlon), that distributed more of the pressure onto my desk and I haven't had an issue since. I hope that helps for anyone having similar ergonomic issues!
  • sethjgore 4mo ago
    That's interesting! I have been using MX for years now (on my third one in 10 years I believe) and there's nothing else that I like. Could you explain what was the issue with the ergonomics? To me it's much better with its gesture features and such. Did you mean it as in wrist pain or?
    • JeremyJaydan 4mo ago
      I wish I liked the MX but I'm not sure if I have bigger than average hands (I don't think so by much!).. I believe the issue is that with putting my hand on the MX mouse the only contact I have with the desk is my wrist and that puts pressure on my wrist. However with a mouse that doesn't have the thumb support like the MX does, my thumb and left side of my (right) hand distributes more pressure along my hand and down to including my wrist so it distributes the pressure more evenly. It's also not necessarily just pain but ergonomic uncomfortable in a way that was super distracting, like warning signs that if I kept it up then I'll eventually be in pain.
• fbnlsr 4mo ago
  Reminds me of AceJump for JetBrains IDEs: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7086-acejump https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7086-acejump
• scambier 4mo ago
  I recently installed https://www.neverclick.com/ https://www.neverclick.com/ (windows only), which also offers an "intelligent" mode that detects possible clickable zones
  • layer8 4mo ago
    Sounds like Vimium for the whole UI, nice.
  • eyepea2007 4mo ago
    Thank you for this. Seems like a great utility. I am just starting to play with the configuration, but was wondering if this app is sending my data anywhere, or if all the 'computer vision' is being performed locally. If the latter, I can use it! Bonus points if you know how to alter the location of hint labels instead of the targets that the hints point to. I've found the controls for putting the targets essentially wherever I like, but the hint locations don't seem to be as customizable?
• dr_kiszonka 4mo ago
  Does Mouseless support multiple monitors? I have been trying out similar software for a few years but haven't seen one that would let me "click" outside the main monitor on Windows.
• hualapais 4mo ago
  IMHO, the best I’d seen of mouseless UI was the pentadactyl/vimium/vimperator model (possibly originating with (lynx or elinks somehow) where a hot key was pressed and everything clickable was overlayed with a number allowing a direct click. Obviously simpler than what is being proposed here, but it was my preferred way of using the browser for some time.
  • semi-extrinsic 4mo ago
    Tridactyl is alive and kicking for Firefox today?
• mklepaczewski 4mo ago
  Is it really faster though? I’ve built PoC of something similar and a test game to check how much faster it was to use keyboard. To my surprise mouse was consistently faster ( by a lot).
  • manuhabitela 4mo ago
    Yeah, I'm really not sold either on the speed aspect. I'm using warpd which is a similar tool, and for me it's really not about speed, but more about the comfort of keeping my hands on the keyboard. Still using the mouse a lot but warpd is often handy.
  • Someone 4mo ago
    https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html: “We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: - Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. - The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding. This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers’ belief that the keyboard is faster. People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement. It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist. While the keyboard users in this case feels as though they have gained two seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is really the case. Because while the keyboard users have been engaged in a process so fascinating that they have experienced amnesia, the mouse users have been so disengaged that they have been able to continue thinking about the task they are trying to accomplish. They have not had to set their task aside to think about or remember abstract symbols. Hence, users achieve a significant productivity increase with the mouse in spite of their subjective experience. Not that any of the above True Facts will stop the religious wars. And, in fact, I find myself on the opposite side in at least one instance, namely editing. By using Command X, C, and V, the user can select with one hand and act with the other. Two-handed input. Two-handed input can result in solid productivity gains (Buxton 1986). Command-Key Illusion. Since users do experience the illusion that keyboarding is faster, there is market pressure to supply them with "shortcuts."—even when using "shortcuts" will actually slow them down. What I generally recommend is supplying as many "shortcuts" as demanded by the market—the real market, not the programmer in the cubicle next to you. But only if these "shortcuts" are not to the detriment of the user of the Macintosh visual interface. This leads to two important guidelines: Guideline: The keyboard interface must not dictate the design of the visual interface. Guideline: The work to design and build the keyboard interface should not sap resources that are needed for the creation of the visual interface. In other words, don’t rape the primary interface for the benefit of so-called "power-users," who may well end up achieving lower productivity by using the keyboard interface anyway. This is a major problem right now.” I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as Tog says (for example, I agree with Tog about cut/copy/paste and, historically, command-S for Save (which, with Mac software from the 1980s, you hit very frequently, if you wedding want to lose stuff due to crashes). I also wonder whether do people with decades of vim editor usage really have to attend to basic cursor movement?), but it’s not completely untrue, either.
• dang 4mo ago
  Related. Others? Mouseless – fast mouse control with the keyboard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42396336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42396336 - Dec 2024 (120 comments)
• Franco-m 4mo ago
  It's interesting, it's true that once you get used to the key combinations everything is more natural and faster, I always used browser shortcuts but never system shortcuts.
• sameersri2004 4mo ago
  I guess it can solve the problem of navigating mouse for AI agents as keys are more objectively determinant.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• artiii 4mo ago
  X have built in mouseless mouse, via numpad setxkbmap -option keypad:pointerkeys + some magic combination mostly "shift+numlock" to enable this
• lakpahana 4mo ago
  I mostly use the browser and the ide; ide shortcuts already figured out for the browser i use vimium extension
• drnick1 4mo ago
  I don't feel like you need this kind of tool on Linux. Just about anything can be done in the terminal, and that is the preferred mouse-free workflow. Using a GUI without a mouse seems antithetical.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
• Insimwytim 4mo ago
  Enable JavaScript This site requires JavaScript to function properly. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. The way I see it, if you go for keyboard-only approach you aim for efficiency. And then you build a site, that doesn't work without javascript at all. Which is a contradiction if you ask me.
  • necovek 4mo ago
    I do not see the contradiction: it is a keyboard-only tool for dynamic GUIs, just like that website with JS.
• jack_pp 4mo ago
  not working on fedora 44
• Havoc 4mo ago
  Just crashes for me on Wayland :/
• twister727 4mo ago
  Is this copied from Emacs "avy" package?
• frangonf 4mo ago
  In the web I use Vimium, I tried mouseless in the past and loved the idea but it just didn't click with me. Now I use a lot a mouse layer in zmk and also a trackball.
• opengrass 4mo ago
  So you have to memorize key coordinates like it's Battleship? idgi Trackpoints are the best for don't-look-down.
• bloqs 4mo ago
  I can only imagine how horrifyingly good at FPS games this will make me
• shelled 4mo ago
  I wish there'd be readily available keyboards/pads where one could just use the surface (key surfaces) as the touchpad when fingers brush across on them softly.
  • antran22 4mo ago
    I was building an ergo split keyboard and was also interested in this problem. After a bit of searching on the internet, I found this: https://github.com/vlukash/corne-trackpad https://github.com/vlukash/corne-trackpad The author used a BlackBerry trackpad. In his blogpost he showed that it can be mounted on top of a keycap. I believe that you can 3d print a special keycap integrate directly with the trackpad.
• arikrahman 4mo ago
  Is this different from https://github.com/jbensmann/mouseless https://github.com/jbensmann/mouseless ? I am confused since they have the same name and product offering but website seems commercial?
• perryizgr8 4mo ago
  This is almost exactly how Windows voice control works. It keeps dividing the screen into smaller and smaller boxes labeled with numbers that you can speak to focus into.
• stuart78 4mo ago
  A while back I had to install a bluetooth mouse on a Mac mini with out existing mouse attached. It was a nightmare only reserved after lots of searching on my phone to enable the accessibility mode setting allowing arrow-based mouse movement. The System Settings app seemed so incredibly hostile to keyboard navigation. I was able to start it, but tab only moves you in and out of the search window. From there, you can search for Bluetooth, but there seems no way to move from the left-hand menu tab the main contents. Within the main window, there are no buttons unless you hover with... a mouse, and no way to traverse the list via keyboard. It'd be great to bring back some basic standards for how tab and arrow keys should aid in situations like this. I don't need them all the time, but they'd have saved me a real headache had they been there then.
  • xp84 4mo ago
    Thing is, Apple has no standards for keyboard navigation of native UIs to bring back, except if you turn on the accessibility feature I think called “Full Keyboard Access” which is supposed to let you tab to any control instead of only text fields. The Mac once had zero ability to navigate a dialog without a mouse, other than Enter/Return to do the default button, and Cmd-period (later ESC once it appeared) for cancel). The original Mac also famously had no arrow keys because they were worried developers, if given arrows, would build (or port over) apps that were keyboard-first or which underused the mouse, and they needed the mouse to be a first-class citizen to make the platform truly differentiated. Windows by contrast started out mouse-optional, so it never lost the keyboard functionality - it’s deeply rooted in the interface’s DNA.
    • swiftcoder 4mo ago
      > Thing is, Apple has no standards for keyboard navigation of native UIs to bring back Huh? All menus and dialogs on Mac are navigable by keyboard. I don't recall a time when they weren't. Unfortunately none of the necessary keyboard shortcuts are actually called out in the UI (we long for the days of Keys! on OS9)
      • xp84 4mo ago
• psychoslave 4mo ago
  Never found how to make something like open contextual menu on Mac. It's interface is so inferior to everything else on so many concrete cases.
• nusl 4mo ago
  Monthly subscriptions for software like this confuse me. The website also obscures that it's paid at all - the first option is "download for X", then the next option is a red button to "unlock". No pricing link/page, nothing. Aimed at getting you to download and use it, then fork up later. References mentioned all going on about productivity etc. Red flags all-round.
  • FabHK 4mo ago
    You click on the Unlock button, and it tells you pricing for monthly, annual, or lifetime. Not exactly rocket science.
    • partyficial 4mo ago
      - app named Mouseless - need to CLICK on Unlock to show pricing (just thought it was funny)
  • weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
    Hey genius just click the big red unlock button that you already mentioned yourself
• nongknot 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• hexa555 4mo ago
  Wow, nobody mentioned kanata yet? It's literal gamechanger for keymapping literally anything-to-anything, including mouse movement via keyboard. Opensource, cross platform, 7.5k stars on Github.
• philonoist 4mo ago
  There are 2 beautiful windows app which are free and does everything this does. https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind https://github.com/adirh3/Fluent-Search https://github.com/adirh3/Fluent-Search
• hyunsangCoder 4mo ago
  It's amazing!!! This will save my right wrist from chronic pain.
• peterisza 4mo ago
  Mouse-only when
• swiftcoder 4mo ago
  It is so weird to me, as someone who entered computing before mice were widespread, that we've just let all the interface designers remove keyboard support. Even mouse-centric platforms like the Macintosh used to have fairly comprehensive keyboard navigation...
  • applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
    It's not weird at all. Keyboards are an obvious power-user mechanic; you have to memorise how to navigate different programs differently, and really even just memorising one program is quite an ask. It is infinitely easier for the average user to work with between one and three input buttons and their eyes than it is to memorise 40 hotkeys + modifier key combinations + chords + modes, so it's simply common sense that as computers expanded from a niche serving 100k nerds into something serving billions of humans, interface design priorities would change. Nerds didn't have the ability to 'let' interface designers do anything; interface designers can just ignore nerds because normal people outnumber nerds by 10000:1.
    • swiftcoder 4mo ago
      [dead]
• hmokiguess 4mo ago
  I like https://www.homerow.app/ https://www.homerow.app/
• davidparker99 4mo ago
  I like tools that reduce context switching. Curious how steep the learning curve is for daily use.
• reboot81 4mo ago
  Mouseless website totally forgets to sell the product. Had to dig into the docs to understand how its used, what is offers.
  • nine_k 4mo ago
    The video shows it, but it takes a bit of effort to grok. They could use some explanatory graphics. Also, not OSS but $49 for a lifetime license. I suppose that I could spend less on tokens to repro the idea for my private use. I like the idea.
• vagab0nd 4mo ago
  As much as I love vim, I still want my cursor tied to the mouse when I'm in a web browser. If you recorded how I browse, you'd see seemingly random mouse movements, clicks, drags, and scrolling. I think it helps me read and keep track of where I am. Though it's hard to say whether it's a net positive.