kanata

Arsenik Kanata

Installation

• To get Arsenik, check out this repository with Git or download it.
• Launch kanata.kbd with Kanata.
  • You can install Kanata by downloading a pre-built executable.
  • Follow the installation details of your operating system.

Windows

Windows users might prefer to download the kanata_winIOv2.exe version as it fixes some weird bugs like C and V inversion.

Note: This tip has been tested for version 1.6.1 of Kanata. In later versions the winIOv2 version might be the default.

Put the kanata_winIOv2.exe in the Kanata Arsenik folder, run it and you’re good to go!

Linux

Run Kanata without sudo

kanata needs to intercept uinput signals, which it cannot do without the proper authorisations.

If you don’t want to run kanata with sudo, you’ll need to allow Kanata to read from uinput. This requires the users to be part of both input and uinput groups.

For that, you first need to create a uinput group if it doesn’t exist yet:

sudo groupadd -U $USERNAME uinput

where $USERNAME is the target user (or users in a comma-separated list). Then add the target user (or users) to the group input:

sudo usermod -aG input $USERNAME

You can check after re-logging that both groups appear in the result of the groups command launched as the target user.

Finally, you need to add a udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/50-kanata.rules:

KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0660", GROUP="uinput", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput"

Making a user-side systemd service for Kanata

Note: This only works if kanata is able to run without sudo (and is using systemd).

Using a systemd service allows running kanata as a daemon, possibly right after logging in. Here is a template for a service file:

[Unit]
Description=Kanata keyboard remapper
Documentation=https://github.com/jtroo/kanata

[Service]
Environment=PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
Environment=HOME=/path/to/home/folder
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/kanata --cfg /path/to/kanata/config/file
Restart=no

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Copy-paste it into ~/.config/systemd/user/kanata.service, fill in the placeholders, then run one of the following commands:

• systemctl --user start kanata.service to manually start kanata
• systemctl --user enable kanata.service so kanata may autostart whenever the current user logs in
• systemctl --user status kanata.service to check if kanata is running

 macOS

Karabiner DriverKit installation

Install the Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice. Latest version (v5.0.0) is not working with Kanata.

To activate it:

/Applications/.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Manager.app/Contents/MacOS/Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Manager activate

You may have to allow Kanata execution in the Privacy & Security panel from macOS settings.

As root, add the following content in /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.pqrs.service.daemon.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon.plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.pqrs.service.daemon.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon</string>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>ProcessType</key>
    <string>Interactive</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice/Applications/Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon.app/Contents/MacOS/Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon</string>
    </array>
  </dict>
</plist>

A new item Fumihiko Takayama will be added in System Settings > Login Items.

Two Karabiner processes should be started:

sh-3.2# ps aux | grep -i karabiner | grep -v grep
_driverkit       26050   0.0  0.0 410598064   2256   ??  Ss    8:02PM   0:00.04 /Library/SystemExtensions/.../org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice.dext/org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice 0x10002b929 org.pqrs.Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice
root             25744   0.0  0.1 410756464   9872   ??  Ss    8:01PM   0:00.16 /Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice/Applications/Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon.app/Contents/MacOS/Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon

Kanata installation

Download Kanata here and save it in a persistent directory.

Add a sudo rule in /private/etc/sudoers.d/kanata where $USERNAME is your username:

$USERNAME ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /path/to/kanata/binary/kanata

To start Kanata at the beginning of the session, add a property list file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.jtroo.kanata.plist with the following content:

<?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.jtroo.kanata</string>

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>sudo</string>
        <string>/path/to/kanata/binary/kanata</string>
        <string>--cfg</string>
        <string>/path/to/kanata/config/file</string>
        <string>-n</string>
    </array>

    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>

    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

In system settings, search Login Items menu and select sudo service in Allow in the Background list. You can restart Kanata with new configuration by disabling and enabling this service.