[HN Gopher] Win-Vind: Vim key binder for Windows
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Win-Vind: Vim key binder for Windows
Author : philonoist
Score : 203 points
Date : 2023-11-12 02:32 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pit-ray.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (pit-ray.github.io)
| userbinator wrote:
| You can already use Windows exclusively with the keyboard since
| at least 3.11, although I'm not sure if they've since broken some
| of that in 11.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| Indeed. With the File Explorer keyboard shortcuts, and naming
| folders sensibly, you can very swiftly navigate around the file
| system with just the keyboard.
|
| I'm the only one at work who does this.
| eviks wrote:
| Can you press A to swiftly go to the parent dir and B to go
| to the previous dir in history (and C for the next), and D to
| switch to the next tab?
| jachee wrote:
| Sorta? Alt-uparrow navigates to the parent directory.
| (Also, Alt-left/right arrow will move back and forth
| through your folder history.) Ctrl-Tab/Ctrl-Shift-Tab will
| switch among next/previous tabs.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| Alt+up arrow gets you to the parent directory. Alt+left
| arrow gets you to the previous folder in the history.
| Ctrl+tab gets you to the next tab, or ctrl+[number] to go
| directly to a specific tab.
| eviks wrote:
| How is Alt-up, which requires holding a modifier and
| moving your hand off home row, a SWIFT alternative?
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| If it's not for you its not for you, but pretending that
| a keyboard shortcut of alt plus a key is somehow an
| entirely different concept and outside the realm of
| alternative is pretty hilarious.
| eviks wrote:
| I've capitalized that word specifically for you, but yes,
| if ignore speed, then bad keybinds are in the same realm.
|
| Likewise, having a single E key to jump down by 10 items
| in your realm would be no different than pressing the
| down arrow 10 times , or using search to find the file
| which ends with "_abc" is no different than using your
| eyes to find all such files and then using a cursor to
| nagivate to them and select - after all, these are all
| keyboard-only (except for the find part)!
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| lol, I just figured out I'm being trolled. It was subtle
| at first, but you went a little over the top with the
| comic book guy style 'well akshully' stuff at the end
| that let me suss it out, but you really did have me going
| for a while. Kudos.
| userbinator wrote:
| Backspace is sufficient to go to the previous.
| nolongerthere wrote:
| A lot of that functionality was neutered in Win10 and even more
| was totally removed in Win11, imo the issue is that apparently
| all the UX devs at microsoft use macs and are trying to MacOS-
| ize windows.
|
| Specifically the start menu is no longer nearly as keyboard
| friendly as it used to be, but other parts are also broken,
| settings is supremely broken wrt keyboard nav, the context menu
| is just a mess in Win11.
| danjc wrote:
| Start menu is also stupidly laggy. You hit start and have to
| wait before typing text will actually activate the search.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| It's the focus on Bing integration and waiting for web
| results.
| addicted wrote:
| I absolutely detest how I have had to train myself to pause
| after hitting the Windows key.
| userbinator wrote:
| I believe that's at least partially because they rewrote it
| in UWP.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Much better to install PowerToys and hit Alt+Enter to find
| whatever exe you need. And if you're hunting down a
| specific file - install Everything, then Alt+Enter ->
| Everything -> search to your heart's content.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| Add in flowlauncher and it becomes even more useful.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Looks slick! https://github.com/Flow-
| Launcher/Flow.Launcher
|
| Do you know if it does anything like what Everything does
| re/ tapping into Windows's underlying file database?
| avtar wrote:
| Looks like there's an Everything plugin
| https://github.com/Flow-
| Launcher/Flow.Launcher#everything-pl...
| iconhacker wrote:
| The best is https://fluentsearch.net/ that supports on
| screen keywords search as well as a powerful launcher and
| file indexer. For screen search it supports UIA as well
| as image/text based on OCR like search. It is the best
| and more accurate than win-vind.
| avtolik wrote:
| PowerToys Run is even slower than the Windows start menu.
| And I have disabled a half of the plugins including file
| and folder search.
| ImaCake wrote:
| I find it to be much, much faster. Not sure what might be
| the difference between our experiences here. I basically
| dont open the windows menu bar anymore, especially since
| the powertoys run bar has a shutdown keyword too.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Confirming the other comment - I've always found it to be
| much faster than the start menu, on every corporate
| issued ThinkPad I've used in the last year (3). Maybe
| something is weird on your machine.
| linhns wrote:
| Might want to reinstall. Mine was also sluggish on the
| first installation but afterwards run swimmingly
| subtra3t wrote:
| Speaking of PowerToys, does anybody know of similar
| generic useful tools for Windows? I know that a lot of
| such apps exist for macOS, but I haven't found many for
| Windows.
| pohuing wrote:
| There's Monitorian to change external screen brightness,
| eartrumpet to give a better audio settings experience in
| your tray and AutomaticDarkMode to change your system
| theme based on some conditions (such as time). These are
| the utilities I always install. Apart from that I use
| ExplorerPatcher because win11 took a big step back in the
| start menu and task bar flyouts.
| sva_ wrote:
| > And if you're hunting down a specific file - install
| Everything, then Alt+Enter -> Everything -> search to
| your heart's content.
|
| Imagine your operating system's search is so bad that you
| allow a closed source app to hook the entire file api
| bboygravity wrote:
| Doesn't Classic Shell (or whatever its follow-up is called)
| fix this like it did in Win10?
|
| If not that alone is reason enough for me not to upgrado to
| Win11.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| start menu searching was amazing in windows 7 and completely
| bonkers bad in windows 10 (haven't tried 11).
|
| It's actually hard for me to fathom how they took the best OS
| they've ever produced (win7) and evolved that into win10.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > and completely bonkers bad in windows 10 (haven't tried
| 11)
|
| Still bad in 11. The other day it had a hard time finding
| notepad for some reason, even after typing in the full
| name.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| yes! I've seen that too, especially after a fresh reboot.
| But if you wait a bit and search again it'll find it.
| wredue wrote:
| The worst is that lots of the time you can just type
| "not" and hit enter and 99% you'll get notepad. But then
| it'll randomly just do something else.
|
| God forbid you don't disable bing search. If you don't,
| that search is all kinds of fucked up.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| I... what? OSX has been very keyboard friendly for as long as
| I can remember. Sonoma is buggier than previous versions, but
| you're been able use the keyboard to navigate most UI widgets
| except for the menus just as before.
| abdusco wrote:
| It has no access keys (underlined letters in menus) which
| forces you to use touchpad
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| You can definitely navigate the menu bar with your
| keyboard, there's even a little search thing in there to
| search through the menu items.
| eviks wrote:
| > except for the menus just as before.
|
| that's a huge exception
| fragmede wrote:
| it's not discoverable in the slightest, but if you hit
| fn-control-f2, you can access the menus via cursor keys
| instead of having to use the mouse
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| It's actually listed here:
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236
|
| And so is "open the help menu" which would take you right
| to the menu search widget, but that doesn't seem to work
| at all in Firefox or Electron apps.
| eviks wrote:
| Thanks for the tip, I'm aware of it, but it breaks the
| core benefit of Alt+X : guaranteed repeats, with fn-
| control-f2-F-Enter you can't be certain to open the File
| menu since there might be another menu starting with F
|
| Predictability is a core feature of UI design
|
| Anyway, personally I use a better alternative to fully
| recreate the Alt+X to open a menu via keyboard maestro,
| so I've sovled the issue for myself, but it still is a
| core Mac deficiency contrary to the "OSX has been very
| keyboard friendly" claim
| Sakos wrote:
| What does that have to do with it? They're clearly going
| for the aesthetic without considerations for how users
| actually interact with it. It's likely they don't even know
| how what keyboard navigation is like on MacOS, because they
| don't use keyboard navigation.
| eviks wrote:
| Not really, many operations are too painful to do using the
| default design primitives, the short jump labels for all the UI
| elements that this app has is an especially good paradigm
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| This is a godsend for quickly solving hardware issues when
| mouse is unavailable. I've also had to use the reverse (only
| mouse, no keyboard)
| appleskeptic wrote:
| This is extremely cool. What a testament to the Windows APIs too.
| chezelenkoooo wrote:
| I haven't used windows in a long time but I love seeing features
| like this.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| This looks like Vimium for the desktop, I'd love to try it out at
| some point
| ashton314 wrote:
| For macOS users who like the keyboard, Shortcat is awesome. I'm
| not affiliated, just a happy user: https://shortcat.app/
| TheVultix wrote:
| I'd also recommend looking at kindavim: https://kindavim.app/
|
| Also a happy customer here. I use shortcut and kindavim in
| tandem
| shizzy0 wrote:
| Dang, this kindavim is kinda amazing.
| hollander wrote:
| But why is this a subscription?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Yeah I was ready to pay right up until I realised it was a
| subscription. Man do I miss the days when you used to buy
| software and only pay for the upgrades
| tannerellen wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this. Just installed it and it's just
| what I've wanted. Been using vimium in the browser for a long
| time but I was always frustrated with every other app that I
| couldn't use my keyboard to navigate.
| crunchbang123 wrote:
| There's also Homerow: https://www.homerow.app
| mpaepper wrote:
| Wow, does something like this exist for Ubuntu as well?
| MistaGobo wrote:
| i3wm might be what you're looking for.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a bunch of things like i3wm. But I have to give a big
| warning. These are very addictive and you'll go down rabbit
| holes making your system beautiful and easy to use (for you and
| absolutely no one else) that you may lose lots of productivity
| (well... work productivity?). So caution, do not visit
| /r/unixporn and do not search tools like picom and rofi. Sure,
| the life looks glamorous but it is an addiction worse than MTG
| or Warhammer, albeit cheaper. Fuck it, who am I kidding, go for
| it.
| mpaepper wrote:
| I use xmonad as a tiling wm, which I guess is quite similar
| to i3, but what I mean is that you can control all apps with
| vim like experience a la vimium. For example controlling gimp
| with vim key bindings. Does i3wm support that?
|
| It sounds like this app for windows does that.
| broscillator wrote:
| Programs that highly rely on their GUI are probably not the
| best for vim-like binds, imo they're the exception. And
| even if you did want that, you'd need a whole
| reimplementation from the program itself, to include modes.
| theblazehen wrote:
| It took a long time to get it there, but my current config
| hasn't changed significantly in ~5 years, and it works very
| effectively
| broscillator wrote:
| Same, this is something they don't tell you. That the
| rabbit hole _does_ have a bottom, and it 's really
| comfortable down there!
| mpaepper wrote:
| This sounds a bit like it. Haven't tried it yet, though.
|
| https://github.com/phil294/vimium-everywhere
| kqbx wrote:
| I wanted to build something like this but for Linux, especially
| the vimium-like hints that would work in any app. I even made a
| prototype by abusing the AT-SPI2 accessibility API.
| Unfortunately, querying AT-SPI2 for all buttons takes too long in
| complex apps. And even if it was fast, many apps (especially non-
| GTK ones) implement accessibility poorly or don't implement it at
| all, so I abandoned the project.
|
| I guess it would be possible to make a framework specific
| implementation, for example by replacing the GTK shared library
| with a modified version, but that's too much effort and I lost
| interest in the whole 'mouseless' thing anyway.
| ossusermivami wrote:
| at least for the terminal, I use kitty which has a "hint" mode
| https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hints/
|
| I use this with emacs and avy + firefox and vimium and don't
| need it anywhere else (works across OS too)
| phil294 wrote:
| I have built this here https://github.com/phil294/vimium-
| everywhere, and it works okay-ish performance-wise. For
| example, generating the click hints on this thread on Firefox
| takes (including FF's UI elements) takes one second, perhaps
| less on a fast machine. I use it on a daily basis. It needed a
| lot of optimizations to get to that point though. There are
| also a few alternatives listed.
|
| And almost all applications support at-spi once you set some
| env vars! Including electron apps etc., see the readme
| broscillator wrote:
| The thing about linux is that ime you can just implement this
| individually across all (most) the apps I use. I have vim-like
| binds for mpv, my pdf reader, terminal emulator/terminal file
| manager, image viewer, and of course my window manager.
|
| The ones where I don't are the ones where it would be too
| complex to be taken care of by an external app. A DAW would
| need its own core implementation of modes for example, same
| with something like Krita and in that case it would probably
| not even be advisable.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Maybe with this tool, 2024 will finally be the year of the
| Windows desktop.
| amoss wrote:
| Looking at the usage page of the docs leaves me confused. Does
| this rebind the ':'-key system wide??? How would that work with
| using the key in normal text entry fields, or in vim?
| cristeigabriel wrote:
| The first thing I did is to check if the easyclick functionality
| uses UIA. It does. I am very satisfied. For those interested,
| Windows Kits comes with a tool called INSPECT.EXE, which allows
| you to interrogate UIs. Very cool!
| gsuuon wrote:
| Wait -- you also get a window manager for free?? This is very
| cool.
| silentguy wrote:
| A very happy user of this. I mainly use it's vimium like feature.
| And, the author is very responsive on github.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that people who are interested
| this might also be interested in a tiling window manager for
| Windows[1]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi
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(page generated 2023-11-12 23:01 UTC)