A next-generation hotkey daemon for Wayland/X11 written in Rust.

Simple Wayland HotKey Daemon

swhkd is a display protocol-independent hotkey daemon made in Rust. swhkd uses an easy-to-use configuration system inspired by sxhkd, so you can easily add or remove hotkeys.

It also attempts to be a drop-in replacement for sxhkd, meaning your sxhkd config file is also compatible with swhkd.

Because swhkd can be used anywhere, the same swhkd config can be used across Xorg or Wayland desktops, and you can even use swhkd in a TTY.

Installation and building instructions can be found here.

swhks &
swhkd

After opening swhkd, you can control the program through signals:

• sudo pkill -USR1 swhkd — Pause key checking
• sudo pkill -USR2 swhkd — Resume key checking
• sudo pkill -HUP swhkd — Reload config file

swhkd closely follows sxhkd syntax, so most existing sxhkd configs should be functional with swhkd.

The default configuration file is in ~/.config/swhkd/swhkdrc with a fallback to etc/swhkd/swhkdrc.

If you use Vim, you can get swhkd config syntax highlighting with the swhkd-vim plugin. Install it in vim-plug with Plug 'waycrate/swhkd-vim'.

All supported key and modifier names are listed in man 5 swhkd-keys.

1. Add the commands from the "Running" section to your window managers configuration file.
2. Enable the service file for your respective init system. Currently, only systemd and OpenRC service files exist and more will be added soon including Runit.

We use a server-client model to keep you safe. The daemon (swhkd — privileged process) is responsible for listening to key events and running shell commands. The server (swhks — non-privileged process) is responsible for keeping a track of the environment variables and sending them to the daemon. The daemon uses these environment variables while running the shell commands. The daemon only runs shell commands that have been parsed from the config file and there is no way to run arbitrary shell commands. The server is responsible for only sending the environment variables to the daemon and nothing else. This seperation of responsibilities ensures security.

So yes, you're safe!

1. https://matrix.to/#/#waycrate-tools:matrix.org
2. https://discord.gg/KKZRDYrRYW

1. @CluelessTechnologist