nchudleigh/vimac

Vimac is a macOS application that lets you control your computer's graphical interface using only the keyboard, without touching the mouse or trackpad. The project is no longer actively maintained under this name: the README notes that Vimac has been succeeded by a newer app called Homerow, which the author describes as a refined and more performant version. The app works through two main modes. Hint mode overlays short letter combinations (like "ka" or "jd") on every clickable element visible in the current window. You type the letters assigned to an element and the app performs a click at that location, as if you had moved the mouse and clicked manually. This lets you click buttons, links, and icons without reaching for the mouse. Scroll mode activates keyboard scrolling using the HJKL keys, which are the directional keys from the Vim text editor that inspired this project. Vimac was directly inspired by Vimium, a browser extension that applies the same keyboard-navigation idea to web pages in Chrome and Firefox. Vimac extends the concept to all macOS application windows, not just the browser. The README describes a developer setup that requires CocoaPods and Carthage (two dependency managers for macOS/iOS projects) and Xcode. There are some quirks in the build process: accessibility permissions need to be re-granted after each clean build using an AppleScript, and several local files must not be committed after setting up for development. Anyone interested in this style of keyboard navigation today would likely look at the successor project, Homerow, rather than this archived repository.