Tool to assist remapping macOS keyboard keys.

kb-remap can be installed from my personal tap which includes pre-built binaries.

brew install rossmacarthur/tap/kb-remap

kb-remap can be installed from Crates.io using Cargo, the Rust package manager.

cargo install kb-remap

In some circumstances this can fail due to the fact that Cargo does not use Cargo.lock file by default. You can force Cargo to use it using the --locked option.

cargo install kb-remap --locked

Pre-built binaries for macOS (aarch64) are provided. These can be downloaded directly from the the releases page.

Alternatively, the following script can be used to automatically detect your host system, download the required artifact, and extract the kb-remap binary to the given directory.

curl --proto '=https' -fLsS https://rossmacarthur.github.io/install/crate.sh \
    | bash -s -- --repo rossmacarthur/kb-remap --to ~/.local/bin

To globally remap keys you can just run the tool with one or more --map or --swap options. For example the following remaps capslock to backspace and swaps § (section) and ` (backtick) on all keyboards.

kb-remap --map capslock:delete --swap '0x64:`'

Reset the mapping using

kb-remap --reset

You can optionally filter which keyboards are remapped by using the --name option. Use the --list option to list the available HID devices and their names.

kb-remap --list

Vendor ID  Product ID  Name
---------  ----------  ----------------------------------
0x0        0x0         BTM
0x0        0x0         Headset
0x4c       0x269       Magic Mouse
0x5ac      0x342       Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
0x5ac      0x342       Keyboard Backlight
0xc45      0x7692      USB Keyboard
0x1050     0x407       YubiKey OTP+FIDO+CCID

Using the name listed above as --name you can remap any key you want using the --map or --swap options. For example the following remaps capslock to backspace and swaps § (section) and ` (backtick) on a the internal macOS keyboard.

kb-remap --name "Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad" --map capslock:delete --swap '0x64:`'

You can reset the mapping using:

kb-remap --name "Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad" --reset

If you want you can inspect the raw hidutil command that would be run for a particular command using the --dump option.

kb-remap --name "Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad" --map capslock:delete --dump

Would output the following:

hidutil property \
    --matching '{"VendorID":1452,"ProductID":834}' \
    --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":30064771129,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":30064771114}]}'

The --map and --swap options both expect the source and destination keys to be specified and separated by a ":" (colon).

There are three ways to specify keys:

Some keys you can specify using their name. For example the Return (Enter) key "⏎" can be specified as "return". These are added on a convenience basis.

Additionally, the following special names are available and map multiple keys if they are used.

Most typeable keys can be specified using their character. For example: the A key can be specified using "A" or "a". The USB Usage ID used will the one that the key corresponds to on a US keyboard.

Any key can be specified by using the USB Usage ID in hex. For example: Z has a Usage ID of "0x1d", in this case the USB Usage Page is assumed to be 0x07 (keyboard). You can also specify the Usage Page and the Usage ID together like this: "0x7_0000_001D".

Powerful applications to remap macOS keys like Karabiner-Elements are often overkill for simple remappings. Additionally, they can sometimes take a while to support the latest macOS version. I wanted a simple reliable solution.

Instead of a constantly running application kb-remap simply subprocesses to the built-in macOS hidutil command to fetch keyboard information and to remap keys. This remapping does not persist if keyboards are unplugged or if your Mac is restarted. kb-remap does not solve this problem for you yet. One option is to install a launchd service to automatically run kb-remap on boot.

This project is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0).

See LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT for details.