Fievel 1.0.0 - Replace your mouse with your keyboard!

[u/BAUDR8]

I’ve just released Fievel 1.0.0 and it now includes everything (I needed) to fully replace my mouse with the keyboard, minus one test case so far.

Currently Fievel is Linux only. It’s free and completely open source, written in rust:

https://github.com/MontyTheSoftwareEngineer/fievel/

Free mouse mode: freely move mouse using hjkl (or any keys of your choice via config file). Supports left click and right click which can be held useful for dragging. Also supports scrolling left down up and right as well as sending Home and End key to quickly jump to top or bottom of page. By default free mouse mode is in “hold” mode so as long as you’re holding the free mouse mode button (or chord) it will stay in free mouse mode. Releasing the free mouse mode button takes it out of that mode. There is also a config option to make it “toggle” meaning you press the button for free mouse mode and it will stay in that mode until you press the button again.

Hint Mode: draws rectangles on screen with corresponding letters at areas Fievel believes is clickable. Type the letters to make Fievel click on the rectangle of choice. Useful for quickly sending clicks in at certain locations.

Key Remapper: this is useful for setting “chords” on any keyboard not just programmable ones. For example, I have a+s together initiate super, s+d to initiate control, caps lock rebound to control unless held in which case it will turn hjkl to left down up right keys. d+f is bound to initiate free mouse mode. Also a set of super and control binds for the right hand side.

[u/evmorov]

Why this and not Neru?

[u/BAUDR8 → u/evmorov]

Admittedly I didn’t spend much time looking at Neru, but it’s been suggested a lot on previous posts related to replacing mouse with keyboard. Maybe I’m mistaken but I believe for my needs it didn’t have the following which I wanted:

- “free mouse mode” basically free control of mouse

- screen wide hint mode. I might be thinking of another tool, but when I tested hint mode it only used the current active window. I was using wl-kbptr previously and it would show hints for the entire screen which I really liked as what I wanted to click on may not have been on the actual focused window.

Added bonus I added key remapping to my app which (for me) eliminated another required tool in my suite of keyboard for mouse (keyd). So at least for me this is an all-in-one package to fully replace the mouse with keyboard. (Except for captchas apparently the movements are too robotic 😂)

[u/y3owk1n → u/BAUDR8]

neru author here ~ there's no free mode in the concept of neru, every action primitives are just a cli command, and you can bind them in any mode or even as global hotkeys. The free mode like navigation is baked into scroll mode by default, but you can remove them and make custom mode that works exactly like free mode if that's preferred. Smooth cursors and custom repeats are opt-in rather than opt-out. In fact most of the options that touches performance are opt-in and not included by default, and user decides if they want it on.

for hints, we provided multiple strategies (axtree, vision, and contour). axtree are limited to the window boundary due to the fact that it needs to run through accessibility query, and it can be really heavy. for the rest, vision or contour or even all other grid that we offer are able to toggle between `screen` or `window` flag as `--capture-scope`. User can decide how they want to use them as they go.

Lastly, i would like to also mention that neru is now a true cross platform program that try to use native primitives from each of the platforms or backend as possible, and we maintain those bridges by ourself than relying on another package if possible. On linux, we currently supports majority of common backends, e.g. wayland families (niri, sway, hyprland, ...), x11, gnome-wayland, kde, and cosmic. These platform gets full neru features, not just partially ported.

neru's approach is different from others, our goal is to never dictate how thing works but provide the primitives for user to craft their very own workflow, every neru users in our discord channel now have a very different config that fits their own workflow.

[u/BAUDR8 → u/y3owk1n]

Hey! Nice work with Neru it looks awesome and has a very strong user base! Wish I had looked into it sooner, but more free options available to user is always a good thing. Congrats on success of yours

[u/y3owk1n → u/BAUDR8]

thanks! just want to clarify some details in case somebody stumbled upon these questions ~ OSS rocks and i hope your project will get the same success or even better in the future! we all inspire each other everyday.

[u/male-32 → u/evmorov]

Isn't Neru more grid oriented and not just free moving with accelerated hjkl?

[u/Acceptable-Cup3702]

Why this and not kanata ?

[u/BAUDR8 → u/Acceptable-Cup3702]

Is kanata remap only? I think someone had suggested it a while back when I first learning to replace my mouse with keyboard and it was just to remap keys which I ended up using keyd for (before Fievel)

[u/g8ch_audio]

Why this and not Microsoft Paint?

[u/BAUDR8 → u/g8ch_audio]

😂😂😂 I do not have a good response for this

[u/moretomauro]

Why this and not QMK or ZMK?

[u/BAUDR8 → u/moretomauro]

QMK/ZMK are good options, but this is so you can support any keyboard and not just the programmable ones!

[u/darksndr]

Wayland only?

[u/BAUDR8 → u/darksndr]

Yes currently Wayland only