A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

The computer mouse is a wonderful invention, but for the past few months I've been working to use mine as little as possible for productivity and ergonomic reasons. It should not be surprising that there are quite a few open-source applications, utilities, and configuration options that are either designed to or incidentally assist in creating a keyboard-driven desktop. This includes tiling window management with PaperWM, the Vimium browser extension, Input Remapper, and more.

PaperWM scrollable window tiling

A tiling window manager can make it more practical to avoid using the mouse by letting the window manager arrange application windows automatically, rather than forcing the user to manually move them around and adjust their size. However, the traditional tiling window manager approach can also have downsides if one has a small screen and/or many application windows open. If windows cannot overlap and have to share a 14-inch laptop screen, for example, it does not take long before windows are too small to be usable.

Another problem is that many of the tiling desktop options require a fair amount of configuration and cobbling together an assortment of tools to create a usable desktop environment.

PaperWM solves both problems by providing a scrollable tiling interface for GNOME with a virtual viewport larger than the screen. Windows are opened at the full height of the monitor and each new window is placed to the right of the current window. If the windows take up more real estate than provided by the monitor, the overflow windows are simply placed off the edge of the screen and users can use keyboard shortcuts (or the mouse) to move windows into view as needed. Since PaperWM is a GNOME extension, users don't have to assemble all of the pieces of a desktop environment themselves.

It has a configurable focus mode that dictates where the window that has focus is placed on the screen. The default focus mode allows the focused window to be anywhere on screen. Centered mode, as the name suggests, ensures that the window with focus is in the center of the screen, and edge mode places the focused window at the right edge of the screen. It's not clear to me why anyone would prefer the right‑edge mode, but it's there for users who want it.

Like other tiling window manager implementations, window operations are easily controlled from the keyboard without needing to touch the mouse. Users can move between application windows using the Super key (usually the key with the Windows logo on a PC keyboard) plus the arrow key. That is, to select the window to the left users can just press "Super+left".

To switch workspaces, use "Super‑`". To resize windows use "Super‑r". That command toggles the width of the window to one of PaperWM's "useful window widths", which are configurable in the extension's settings. For example, I have the widths set to 25%, 33%, and 50% of the screen's resolution. Windows can, of course, still be expanded to full screen mode with the default GNOME keybinding (F11). The usage section of the PaperWM README has a full rundown of all of the extension's options and how to configure it.

It is also possible, of course, to move and resize windows in PaperWM with the mouse or trackpad if a user prefers to do so. PaperWM supports assigning touchpad gestures for some operations, such as swiping between windows and workspaces.

Finally, PaperWM has what it refers to as a "scratch layer" for windows that float above the tiled layout. This might be useful for a chat client or music player, or for applications like a calculator. The "Ctrl+Super+Esc" shortcut removes a window from the tiling layout and places it in the scratch layer. "Super+Esc" will hide the window or make it visible again, and "Shift+Super+Esc" shows or hides all application windows stored in the scratch layer.

The project is available under the GPLv3 license and was originally developed by Tor Hedin Brønner and Ole Jørgen Brønner. It is currently maintained by Karim Vergnes and Stephen Michel. The most recent version, v47.1.0, was released in October, 2024.

PaperWM is not the only option for scrollable tiling, but it has the virtue of being extremely easy to adopt with a minimum of configuration to get started. Other options include the niri Wayland compositor, Karousel for KDE, and papersway for the Sway and i3 window managers.

Firefox bookmark keywords

Firefox bookmarks can be assigned a keyword that will open the URL directly from the address bar. For example, if a user has bookmarked the current LWN weekly edition, they can edit the bookmark and add a keyword like "week". Then, typing week into Firefox's location bar will automatically open https://lwn.net/current/.

Unfortunately, many users may not even be aware the feature exists because it's essentially hidden. For some reason, Firefox does not present the Keyword field when adding a bookmark, it is only visible when editing a bookmark after it is created.

This is particularly useful for pages that are visited frequently or pages that one uses infrequently but are inconvenient to navigate to. For example, it might save several clicks to bookmark the page for filing bugs with one's favorite distribution and assign the bookmark a memorable keyword like "fedbugs" or "debbugs". Then the page is just a "Ctrl-l fedbugs" away. To return focus to the page in Firefox (rather than the location bar) use "Shift-F6".

Vimium Firefox extension

The bookmark keyword trick only goes so far in helping to reduce mouse usage in Firefox. To really reduce rodent reliance, I've turned to the Vimium extension, which brings Vim-like keyboard shortcuts to the browser. It is available for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge browsers but I have only tested it with Firefox. It is an MIT-licensed project that has been in development for more than 15 years, with quite a few contributors over that time.

Once it is installed, hitting "?" will bring up an overlay with Vimium's default keybindings. Like Vim, the Vimium extension is modal; it starts in normal mode, which means that navigation is done with standard alphabetic keys. Vim users will find few surprises here: the "h,j,k,l" keys are used for directional scrolling, "gg" will move to the top of the page, "G" to the bottom, and so forth. To open links using the keyboard, press "f" and Vimium will display little pop-up squares with letters next to each link. Typing the lower-case letters will open the link in the same tab, while typing the upper-case letters will open the link in a new tab.

Unlike Vim, Vimium does not require entering an insert mode to insert text for forms, etc. Typing "i" does place Vimium in an insert mode, but it would be better named "bypass mode". The insert mode tells Vimium to ignore key commands until the the escape key (Esc) is pressed and it returns to normal mode. This is useful for sites such as Gmail and GitHub, which provide their own shortcuts that may conflict with Vimium's. Users can set up rules to automatically disable some or all of Vimium's keybindings on specific sites to avoid any conflicts.

Finally, Vimium has visual and visual line modes to select text: "v" enters visual mode, and "V" enters visual line mode. Once text is selected, it can be copied (or "yanked") with "y" as with Vim. In normal and visual modes users can copy the current page URL with "yy" and select any link on the page to copy with "yf".

Vimium also features the somewhat questionably named "Vomnibar", which is similar in function to Firefox's location bar. Users can provide a URL or search term, but it will also allow searching through history and bookmarks. The Vomnibar can be summoned with "o" or "O", depending on whether the user would like to open a link in the current tab or a new tab, respectively. Note that Vimium does not disable the browser's location bar, so Ctrl-l still works as expected.

After a few days of using Vimium it was rarely necessary for me to need a mouse to do anything I wanted in Firefox.

Mouseless mail with aerc and Quake Terminal

Aerc is a relatively recent entry in the terminal-based, keyboard-driven mail-client category. It is extremely configurable, works well with multiple accounts, and (there may be a theme here) uses Vim-like keybindings by default. LWN covered the aerc mail client in October 2024, so I won't spend a lot of time on it here except to say that one can happily use aerc for email without ever needing a mouse and plow through a lot of email in a short time with it.

Since so much of my workflow centers around email, I like to be able to access aerc quickly. Since I am easily distracted, I like to be able to hide aerc just as quickly to avoid being drawn into inbox maintenance when I need to be doing something else. The solution is using a drop-down terminal to summon and dismiss aerc (or any terminal application) with the press of a key.

Some terminal applications include drop-down functionality as part of their feature set, but if not, the Quake Terminal extension for GNOME will provide the feature. After installing the extension, users can choose the terminal that they would like to use with Quake Terminal and set the shortcut to be used when toggling the terminal visibility. The default is "F12".

Even if one does not use a terminal-based email client, the drop-down terminal feature is useful for all sorts of operations where one wants to run a command quickly.

Mouseless Emacs

I have been a Vim user for a very long time, but Emacs is sort of the "house editor" for LWN, so I made a concerted effort to switch when I joined last year. Over time, I have learned to appreciate how much one can do with Emacs, and it has grown on me—after a fair amount of work to bend it to my will.

After a few months of using Emacs's menu and toolbar, and trying to adapt to Emacs's default keybindings for editing text, I realized there was no sense in throwing away more than 25 years developing muscle memory for Vim's keybindings and gave up on that. I embraced evil, the extensible vi layer for Emacs, and Evil vimish-fold to add the text-folding functions from Vim that evil lacks.

But there is much more to Emacs than basic text editing, such as Org mode. To reduce the temptation to use the menu and force myself to learn (or adapt) shortcuts for other operations, I added a configuration to hide the toolbar and menu in my ~/.emacs, and shortcuts to toggle them if absolutely needed:

;; Hide unnecessary toolbars
    (tool-bar-mode -1)
    (menu-bar-mode -1)

;; Shortcuts to show toolbars
    (global-set-key (kbd "C-c Y") 'tool-bar-mode)
    (global-set-key (kbd "C-c M") 'menu-bar-mode)

That not only encouraged using shortcuts, it also reclaimed a bit of screen space that was taken up by the toolbars. Since I didn't need the title bar either, I dispensed with that:

;; Goodbye GNOME title bar
    (setq default-frame-alist '((undecorated . t)))

Remapping keys to mice and more

My goal is to reduce mouse usage as much as possible, without going entirely overboard. For example, there seems to be little point in trying to cobble together a mouseless workflow for using image editors to crop and resize screenshots for publication. It's a job that needs doing only once or twice a week, maximum. A mouseless approach might be possible, but the effort would take a long time to pay off. Likewise, navigating preference dialogs or using GNOME Software to install a Flatpak package is something that is probably possible to do with keyboard only—but the payoff in learning to do so seems minimal.

But, if a user really wants (or needs) to replace the mouse with a keyboard, GNOME's Accessibility features allow users to use the numeric keypad to move the mouse pointer. However, this is slower for me than just using the mouse.

I did want to remap some of my keys to be more useful, though. GNOME is somewhat restrictive in that regard. GNOME Tweaks allows users to remap some keys, but it only provides a set of predefined layout options and does not allow users to create arbitrary remappings. For example, instead of setting Caps Lock to Escape, I wanted to remap it to the Alt+x shortcut that Emacs uses to preface so many commands.

For that, I turned to Input Remapper, an application that can remap keyboard, mouse, joystick, and other controller input. Input Remapper sets up per-device rules to remap keys or mouse inputs. That means, for example, that rules for a laptop keyboard to remap Caps Lock will not carry over to an external USB keyboard. It also means, though, that if one has a gaming keypad or another input device, it might be used to set up really complex remappings.

Input Mapper can also remap input from one device type to another. For example, users can remap keyboard input to mouse input in a more fine-grained way than GNOME's Accessibility features.

Basically, users can remap input by choosing their device, and then recording the input to be replaced and assigning it an event name or macro. For example, to replace the Caps Lock with Alt+x I selected my ancient Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard as the device, and then recorded pressing the Caps Lock key. As output I chose Alt_L + x, then applied the change.

The project lists a number of examples of macros and such that can help in getting started with the application. It is not entirely intuitive, but after setting up a few substitutions it starts to make sense. It might be a project best started on the weekend, since it's easy to get lost down a rabbit hole of customizing input devices.

No doubt there are many other tools and tricks to de-mouse the desktop even further that I have yet to find. Even so, putting all of these tools together has been a fun project that has already increased my productivity and "flow" in a noticeable way.