Gemini CLI made me a system tray app to run Kanata

[argenkiwi]

I jus wanted to share a project that I creatively called kanatray generated by the Gemini CLI using Gemini 2.5 Pro. I just asked for it to run on Windows, MacOS and Linux so it chose Python as the programming language. I should have asked it to be bundled as an executable.

[argenkiwi]

Update: I managed to get this running on Linux pretty easily. However, I have found quite a few problems getting this to run on MacOS:

• Installing Python 3 required me to use pyenv, not very intuitive for non-technical users.
• The file picker to select the config file won't open when clicking on the menu button (it does if the script triggers it when the app is launched).
• I haven't been able to figure out how to give the app/script Input Monitoring privileges.

I have not tried it on Windows yet.

[argenkiwi]

Another update: Finally managed to get the file selector to display by changing the UX so the config file needs to be selected at launch. Also, the I replaced the Select config file button with a Reset button that clears the configuration and quits the app so you can select a different config file next time you launch the app.

In terms of Input Monitoring privileges, somehow I missed you need to run the script in a terminal that is white listed under the Input Monitoring list and run the script with admin privileges (i.e., sudo).

[argenkiwi]

To get karabiner's daemon to run I placed this file into /Library/LaunchDaemons and ran the following commands:

• sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.pqrs.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon.plist
• sudo launchctl enable system/org.pqrs.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Daemon

After rebooting I was able to run kanatray from a Terminal that has been added to the Input Monitoring list.

[argenkiwi]

To run the app without keeping the terminal open I created a zsh script called kanatray.zsh:

#!/bin/zsh
nohup python /path/to/kanatray/main.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

And, from a Terminal that has been added to the Input Monitoring list, I run:

sudo ./kanatray.zsh