No Mouse Mondays

Posit Work Week 2025

Sam Edwardes

2025-02-05

Why?

  • Better ergonomics 💪
  • More efficient (questionable…) 🤷
  • Fun 🤓

My tools

  1. Keyboard Layers with ZSA Voyager
  2. Home row mods
  3. Shortcat and Vimium
  4. Aerospace Window Manager
  5. Vim Grammar (Neo Vim, VS Code, Obsidian, Arc)

Keyboard Layers with ZSA Voyager

The ZSA Voyager, Le pièce de résistance.

Create custom layers with ORYX. Here is my current layout

  • Layer 1: Alpha characters and home row mods
  • Layer 2: Symbols and Numbers
  • Layer 3: I don’t use
  • Layer 4: Random stuff
  • Layer 5: I don’t use

Home row mods

Minimize your finger travel.

Shortcat and Vimium

Shortcat (works everywhere) and Vimium (chrome based browsers) help you navigate a GUI first world with your keyboard.

Demo

  • Search for Positron
  • Download the latest binary
  • See open tabs
  • Close a tab

Aerospace Window Manager

AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS. GitHub / Docs

  • Auto arrange windows
  • Move to windows with

⌥ Option + h (or, j, k, l)

  • Swap window positions with

⇧ Shift + ⌥ Option + h (or, j, k, l)

Vim Motions

Biggest learning curve, biggest payoff. BUT, you don’t need to memorize. The grammar of editing text: verb (operators) + noun (motions).

Many apps have support for (some) vim operators and motions: VS Code, Positron, Obsidian, Gmail, Chrome (via Vimium).

Obsidian vim grammar demo.

j            # move down
10j          # move down 10 lines
$            # end of the line
w            # move forward to beginning of the next word
3w           # move forward 3 words
gg<shift>vG  # Go to the top, select the line, select to the bottom (AKA select all)

Remap arrow keys with Karabiner Elements or Superkey.

  • Left: ⇧ Hyper + h
  • Right: ⇧ Hyper + l
  • Down: ⇧ Hyper + j
  • Up: ⇧ Hyper + k

Honourable mentions

  • Karabiner Elements home row mods and other customizations with any keyboard.
  • Superkey easily set up vim arrow keys and hyper/meh key.
  • Raycast a better Spotlight, a more modern Alfred

Thank you!

Generate a cartoon image of a genius mad data scientist hitting a gong to signify that I have run out of time at work week show and tell.