Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Function keys productivity trick

mxgrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 221 posts

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#81

Post by runjake »

I use my function keys for other things within programs.

I use Alfred on macOS to quickly launch various apps and actions using the launcher hotkey plus a few chars. I don't have a problem with my workflow, and it syncs between my Macs.

I am doing similar with Albert on Linux, with the goal of someday moving back to Linux full-time.

At this point, I have a vast collection of workflows and snippet completions and I feel like my experience is pretty optimized for my tasks, but you do you.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#82

Post by phneutral26 »

iambateman wrote: post #72
the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

Any recommendation for Mac?

Yabai is quite decent.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#83

Post by rgoulter »

sophacles wrote: post #70
chrismorgan wrote: post #51

While talking of function keys— My greatest annoyance with keyboards is that Fn keys (as found to one side of the left Ctrl/Control key; ubiquitous on laptops and common on other keyboards) are always implemented in firmware, and simply don’t do anything with most of the keys, but implement them in such a way that I can’t either. My laptop’s keyboard has one Fn key, and 82 others.¹ I can only use Fn with 20 of them—o…

If you haven't already gone down the custom keyboard rabbit hole, I suspect you might like it. There's a pretty large enthusiast community out in the world, and there's a lot of ways to go custom - build your own from scratch, use a kit, use a pre-built with flashable firmware, etc. The firmwares used (e.g. QMK) allow you to build the sort of thing you're talking about into your keyboard and more.

Custom keyboards are great. :-)

In addition to custom firmware, the other benefit is some custom keyboards have designs which are more coherent than typical keyboards. (e.g. replacing the gigantic spacebar, with more keys so that the thumbs can be more useful).

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#84

Post by rootix »

iambateman wrote: post #72
the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

Any recommendation for Mac?

Never tried it myself, but https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai comes to mind

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#85

Post by eviks »

deathanatos wrote: post #64
marcosdumay wrote: post #30

You know, the CTRL-Fn combinations are usually mapped to virtual workspaces on Linux, what is much more powerful than applications and give you the same kind of speedup. Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? Anyway, no, it's bad to remap the Fn keys. They have been used to fast intra-application navigation since they appeared, and they are still in wide use. (Does the author not use appl…

> Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? macOS. There's no Alt+Tab, for example: no way to switch between two arbitrary windows on the Z-stack¹. The not-equivalent that exists is ⌘+Tab, and it switches apps ; the usability of it, vs. Alt+Tab, is horrendous. (It fronts stuff you don't want, covering up stuff you do want.) There are workspaces … but I have found them hard to get productive…

> There's no Alt+Tab

There is https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#86

Post by neilv »

the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

Or, use tiling window manager, but also have symbolic mnemonics for the apps (not have to remember on which desktop it's on, nor change your muscle memory if you change what desktop it's on).

For example mnemonic "M" for mail/email, so my xmonad.hs has something like:

    , ((mod3Mask, xK_m), raiseNextMaybe (spawn "/usr/bin/someemailprog") (className =? "Someemailprog"))
Anytime I hid modifier+M, it will either go to the desktop and window with the mail program, or start the mail program if it's not yet running.

Personally, my mail program is usually on desktop 1, but some of the other program, like Web browser, I move between desktops as needed for tasks. Hitting modifier+W always gets to it.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#87

Post by perihelions »

seanw444 wrote: post #49
bvrmn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It makes more sense to bind apps to homerow keys with some chain or modificator to "snipe" often-used applications instead of F-keys.

More of a mnemonic in my case, not just homerow, but yeah launching frequented apps has never been more fluid than when I switched to my tiling WM.

You can also get most of this configuration-free in Gnome. [Super] key switches to a spotlight context; one alphabetic letter focuses the most frequently used app with that prefix; and [Enter] key launches it without prompt.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#88

Post by kroltan »

marcosdumay wrote: post #30

You know, the CTRL-Fn combinations are usually mapped to virtual workspaces on Linux, what is much more powerful than applications and give you the same kind of speedup. Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? Anyway, no, it's bad to remap the Fn keys. They have been used to fast intra-application navigation since they appeared, and they are still in wide use. (Does the author not use appl…

> Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows?

My guess is Apple users, as window switching in macOS is terribly fiddly when compared to application switching.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#89

Post by perihelions »

the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

That's not unique to tiling WM's. In Gnome too, you can just assign the keyboard shortcuts "Switch to workspace " to Meta+.

Re: Function keys productivity trick

#90

Post by TacticalCoder »

the_gipsy wrote: post #35

No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

> See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.

That's basically what I do. A tiling WM and then one modifier key (Super in my case but whatever) and then keys to go to any workspace/virtual desktop I want.

And most of my workspaces are always organized in exactly the same manner, so I know exactly where is what.

Post reply on HN