Hello all! I am a student from Singapore who was introduced to Vimium by a friend two years ago. Vimac is my attempt to implement Vimium on an OS level.
I have shared this app on Reddit about a year ago. Since then, the notable changes would be a major performance buff in webkit/electron, force keyboard layout, and reducing the overwhelming no. of hints to what is just "clickable".
Glad to see more people making tools around the Accessibility API. I've been working on a similar app called Shortcat (https://shortcatapp.com) almost 8 years ago (wow) but haven't had the time to properly work on it. It sounds like you're encountering a lot of the same problems I've had when I was starting out (figuring what's actionable, forcing keyboard layout etc). Let me know if you want to chat about the various problems in that space
Hey, it’s you! The author of Shortcat. I tried out your project maybe a year ago and absolutely loved the concept, but eventually had to give up on it when it kept crashing and didn’t reliably find what I was attempting to click on. I never knew if Shortcat was to blame or if it was the application not being properly presented to the Accessibility system.
Anyway, Shortcat is a freakin brilliant idea and I hope you keep working on it, or help this author with their project. If you think you’re going to have time to work on Shortcat again, though, I’d happily buy a copy (even if I already did before, I can’t remember if I did) and be an active bug reporter.
Unfortunately I've been rather busy the last couple of years and haven't had the capacity to work on Shortcat, and coupled with not being amazing at Obj-C/Swift/Cocoa (my major contributions are FuzzyAutocomplete and the initial POC for Semantic History in iTerm2), being frustrated with building UIs on Mac (mostly build web stuff). There's also the problem that Accessibility APIs aren't well-documented and isn't commonly used, and applications not implementing Accessibility correctly (and potentially causing crashes in Shortcat, or making the target application hang), which was super tough to deal with as a solo dev.
I did have a crack at bringing the Swift-based prototype up to date with Swift 5 on the weekend, and am investigating the feasibility of using SwiftUI which would help me on the UI front! Ideally I'd find another dev to work on Shortcat (rev-share or otherwise), and consider a more sustainable pricing model.
I think tools that depend on Accessibility APIs that are used by people who don't normally depend on Accessibility APIs can force developers to improve their AX implementation so people who do depend on good Accessibility to use applications can benefit.
It makes me happy to hear that it was good enough for you to buy another copy!
I wish I could remember how I came across Shortcat. It may have actually been simply that your product description matched what I was seeking so perfectly that it turned up on a Google search...or perhaps it was through some second-hand recommendation coming indirectly from a Google search like this one: https://gist.github.com/lornajane/3892c39098cf70baa9c7a1874c...
But the main thing is that Shortcat was simply the thing that I always thought should have been baked into operating systems since the idea of “search to execute” became a thing. Mostly these days I rely on Command-Shift-/ (Menubar search), but that is a poor poor substitute. Shortcat really shines in dynamic context selection, like when trying to navigate something like Outlook for Mac, where you don’t know the shortcuts and don’t care to use them, and anyway just want to select the email that contains the text you’ve already started reading. Or things like the preference menus where navigating the combination of tabs and sidebars can be especially unclear from a keyboard perspective.
One issue I had with running this aside from it taking quite a lot of CPU is that when opening Discord, I'd always get a warning that I am using a screen reader.
The reason for slow performance + high cpu usage on electron/webkit apps was just the sheer amount of mach ipc calls (from the many many <div> layers) needed to be made to fetch the entire UI element tree.
I was also using a bunch of async queues instead of just a single NSThread which likely contributed to high cpu usage, and that has also been fixed.
> warning that I am using a screen reader.
Nope, you should get this warning, although it was a one time prompt for me. This is because Accessibility is opt-in for electron apps for performance reasons, and I have to ask for it through setting the AXManualAccessibility attribute (see https://electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/accessibility#assistive...), which I guess triggers the prompt.
Great work! I am just trying it out, but realized it doesn't highlight links/buttons in Firefox. Is that outside the scope of this tool? If so, do you just suggest using Vimac in combination with Vimium?
One missing piece worth noting is Vimium doesn't seem to support navigating preferences, bookmarks, etc. in Firefox or anything in the toolbar. Not sure if that is possible solely with the WebExtensions API.
Nope. This is really just making your GUI work better with the keyboard. Editing text is fundamentally different than manipulating a graphical interface, so this doesn't mimic any vim functionality (with one exception: when this app is in scroll mode, you can use HJKL keys to scroll windows contents.)
It's very much like Vimium, which is nothing like Vim, so no. I see Vimium being referred to as "vim bindings" for chrome which I never got. Maybe someone could enlighten me on this.
It's the best trackpad out there, and all trackpads are clunky and non-ergonomic. A mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, or almost anything else is better. Due to the location of a trackpad you are guaranteed to have your wrist bent which limits how long you can work before discomfort.
My right wrist used to pain a lot because of excessive mouse usage. I had tried out various keyboard-driven apps but I didn't find any app practical enough for my needs, so I made one.
I'd like to share here my "generic" keyboard-driven navigation app for Windows:
I had similar problems years ago and switched to a trackball. No problems since. I use a Logitech with thumb moving the ball. I keep it and keyboard at waist level with monitor at eye level.
It took about a year without mouse use for my wrist to heal. Now I use a mouse but I'm very careful with posture and mouse positioning.
How long did it take to familiarize yourself with the trackball?
I didn't really try other pointing devices because I thought that they won't be as good as the mouse, plus I liked the idea of using keyboard-driven navigation software.
I have been looking for something like this for a LONG time. Impressive! My ideal state is to be able to navigate anything and everything with VIM keybindings. Including the physical world :)
I made this! It's not perfect but it's most of the way there in terms of Vim motions and operators, and works in any text field. It uses the Accessibility API when available, and then falls back to raw keypresses (like alt + right arrow to simulate `w`, etc).
In the fallback mode, not all motions are available, because we can't read cursor position or text field value without accessibility support.
You may know this already but emacs keys are supported in all text input areas on Mac. Carl-a (start of text), Carl-e (end of text) Carl-k (cut Text to end of line) Carl-y (yank/paste cut text) and many more.
And the Mac kill ring is separate from the clipboard so that means you can have two things copied at once and insert them with separate keybindings. Unfortunately the kill ring only contains a single element, so has no history.
some other useful ones are C-h/C-d (backwords/forwards delete), C-o (insert line), and the main Emacs movement keys C-n, C-p, C-b, C-f. Remapping Capslock to be a second Control makes using these regularly much more natural. Karabiner is a good app for easily remapping keys on macOS.
This is the most promising project I've come across: https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim, although it only applies to the browser. The last time I tried it out it had some performance issues though.
This is great, thank you! Although, the name seems like a bit of a misnomer since there's not much in common with vim aside from the HJKL keys. It's more like EasyMotion or avy-mode.
The idea is great, but I don't think it'll be faster for me to navigate in Mac using vimac than using trackpad or mouse currently.
I think the thing which is not wonderful now is: in vim, you enter a mode, in that mode, you can do a series of navigation to get to the final destination. While in vimac, you enter a mode to do just one navigation and you're out of the mode, you have to press the key enter the mode again to do another navigation. This makes me feel not productive at all.
I’ve been thinking about implementing something like this for years - it’s great to see that someone actually went ahead and did it!
The accessibility API is one thing that I really miss since mostly leaving macOS for Linux. Most apps support it in at least a rudimentary way, and it allows for a bunch of neat tricks.
I am a Mac user, but now that you've mentioned this, I'll upvote the parent on general principle. While I don't think Vimac is specifically for me, it's odd little system-level utilities like this that would make it really tough for me to switch to Windows -- or Linux -- if I couldn't find equivalents.
awesome indeed. Any plans to support more Vim navigations, something like 'gg' and 'G' would be useful IMO. As well as the ability to use a custom 'ESC' mapping to leave the scroll mode.
Wow, seems phantastic. Love vimium in Firefox and all automation / keyboard remapping tools on the Mac (Keyboard Maestro, Alfred App, Karabiner Elements). Will definitely check this out.
I have shared this app on Reddit about a year ago. Since then, the notable changes would be a major performance buff in webkit/electron, force keyboard layout, and reducing the overwhelming no. of hints to what is just "clickable".
It is open source at https://github.com/dexterleng/vimac/.
Do let me know if you have any questions!