Xkeysnail macOS config

A Xkeysnail config that emulates macOS styled keyboard controls/shortcuts in Linux and X11.

Installation

1. Install Xkeysnail using your package manager or following Xkeysnail installation instructions.

2. Clone or download the provided config file to a location of your preference.

3. Edit the config file and replace Your-terminal-app-here with the window class of your terminal application.

   (To get the window class name, run xprop WM_CLASS and click on the window of the terminal application)

4. Create a systemd service for xkeysnail to run automatically on the background:

   cd /etc/systemd/system && sudo nano xkeysnail.service
   

5. Insert the following code to the service config and edit the path to the provided config file:

   [Unit]
   Description=xkeysnail
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   KillMode=process
   ExecStart=/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/xkeysnail --quiet --watch /path/to/your/config-macos.py
   ExecStop=/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/killall xkeysnail
   Restart=on-failure
   RestartSec=3
   Environment=DISPLAY=:0
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=graphical.target
   

6. Enable the xkeysnail service:

   sudo systemctl enable xkeysnail
   

7. Start the xkeysnail service:

   sudo systemctl start xkeysnail
   

Troubleshooting

• To check if the xkeysnail service is running properly, run:

  sudo systemctl status xkeysnail
  

• If you encounter errors like Xlib.error.DisplayConnectionError: Can't connect to display ":0.0": b'No protocol specified\n', make sure you have xhost package installed and try:

  sudo xhost + && sudo systemctl restart xkeysnail
  

Limitations

• Command key input in terminals is troublesome, since macOS uses ctrl for all terminal operations. While the provided scripts provide a workaround for this, you won't be able to use these in built-in terminals (i.e. VS Code).