TIL

Today I learned.

Disable subpixel anti-aliasing on macOS

Mar 18, 2023

#macos

Apple removed the setting to manually disable subpixel anti-aliasing in recent macOS versions as it's supposed to be automatic, however I've noticed that it is still effective in many apps.

To manually disable it on system level, run the following command in the terminal:

defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0

Found here.

Configure Karabiner with Goku

Jul 13, 2022

Karabiner-Elements is a macOS utility for keyboard customization. I've been using it for years. It uses a verbose JSON configuration which can be painful to work with.

Goku lets you use the edn for configuration, which makes it a lot easier.

Here's a quick sample for one of the most common Karabiner use cases:

{:des "caps_lock to esc when pressed alone, to ctrl as modifier"
 :rules [[:##caps_lock :left_control nil {:alone :escape}]]}

Compare directories with diff

May 29, 2022

diff (included in macOS and most Linux distributions) lets you easily compare two directories.

For example, diff --recursive --brief dir_one dir_two will give a brief list of differences between dir_one and dir_two.

Remap keys on Linux with keyd

Jan 18, 2022

Today I learned about the existence of keyd, which is a system-wide daemon program that lets you remap keys on a kernel level.

I previously used kmonad, but its configuration file can be overwhelming to setup for simple needs. Keyd feels simpler and has a minimalistic configuration syntax.

In author's words:

Notably keyd was written entirely in C with performance and simplicitly in mind and will likely never be as configurable as kmonad (which is extensible in Haskell).

Here's how my current configuration looks like:

[ids]
0001:0001

[main]
shift = oneshot(shift)
control = oneshot(control)
leftalt = oneshot(meta)
leftmeta = oneshot(alt)
capslock = overload(C, esc)
f = overload(extend, f)
v = overload(number, v)

[extend]
h = left
j = down
k = up
l = right
y = home
u = pagedown
i = pageup
o = end
m = enter
; = backspace

[number]
m = 1
, = 2
. = 3
j = 4
k = 5
l = 6
u = 7
i = 8
o = 9
; = 0

What it does:

turns all modifier keys into "one-shots", meaning they stick until next keypress so you don't have to hold them down;
swaps left alt and meta (cmd) keys;
capslock becomes esc on tap and ctrl on hold;
holding f activates the "extend" layer with navigation keys on the home row;
holding v activates the "number" layer with numbers arranged into a numpad on the home block.

Unfortunately, keyd is Linux-only. If you're interested in a cross-platfom solution, check out kmonad.

Move window between spaces on macOS

Jan 16, 2022

#macos

I always use multiple spaces on macOS and the typical way to move windows between spaces always felt annoying:

open Mission Control;
grab the needed window on the current space and drag it to another space;
open the new space.

Given that I mostly use keyboard shortcuts for quick switching between spaces (which can be configured in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Mission Control ), this whole multi-step operation involving several animations is way too slow.

There's a better way:

without opening Mission Control, grab and hold the window on the current space;
use the keyboard shortcut (described above) to switch to a different space -- the window will follow.

There are tools that let you do this without involving a mouse: like yabai or amethyst, but I stopped using them since macOS is hard to operate without a mouse in the first place, even when running the aforementioned tools.

Checkout files from another branch in git

Jan 15, 2022

#git

Say you're on branch foo and you need to grab some files from branch bar.

Turns out, git-checkout can help:

# on branch foo
git checkout bar path/to/file

Transforming a keyboard matrix in ZMK

Jan 15, 2022

I've had an issue with ZMK when I wanted to use my existing 34-key keymap for a new keyboard which has more keys.

After a brief look at the source code of keyboard definitions, I found that one can apply a transform in keymap file which maps listed keys to specific switches on the board.

// this is the keymap file for your keyboard (e.g. corne-ish-zen.keymap)

// include the keymap file with your layout
#include "34keys.keymap"
// include the matrix transform definitions from ZMK (used below)
#include <dt-bindings/zmk/matrix_transform.h>

/ {
    chosen {
        // apply the transfrom defined below
        zmk,matrix_transform = &thirty_four_key_transform;
    };

    thirty_four_key_transform: keymap_transform_2 {
    compatible = "zmk,matrix-transform";
    columns = <10>;
    rows = <4>;
      // map keys listed in your keymap to specific switches on the board
      // | SW2  | SW3  | SW4  | SW5  | SW6  |   | SW6  | SW5  | SW4  | SW3  | SW2  |
      // | SW8  | SW9  | SW10 | SW11 | SW12 |   | SW12 | SW11 | SW10 | SW9  | SW8  |
      // | SW14 | SW15 | SW16 | SW17 | SW18 |   | SW18 | SW17 | SW16 | SW15 | SW14 |
      //                      | SW20 | SW21 |   | SW21 | SW20 |
            map = <
      RC(0,1) RC(0,2) RC(0,3) RC(0,4) RC(0,5)  RC(0,6) RC(0,7) RC(0,8) RC(0,9) RC(0,10)
      RC(1,1) RC(1,2) RC(1,3) RC(1,4) RC(1,5)  RC(1,6) RC(1,7) RC(1,8) RC(1,9) RC(1,10)
      RC(2,1) RC(2,2) RC(2,3) RC(2,4) RC(2,5)  RC(2,6) RC(2,7) RC(2,8) RC(2,9) RC(2,10)
                              RC(3,4) RC(3,5)  RC(3,6) RC(3,7)
            >;
    };
};