A guide to home row mods

[giscus[bot]]

A guide to home row mods

What are home row mods? What is a mod-tap? What settings do you need to use? What are the alternatives? And more in this article...

https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods

[paulistoan]

Thank you so much, I found this very useful! Personally, I found your suggested approach of chording with thumb keys -> layers the most suitable for me. Here is my reference KMonad keymap: https://github.com/paulistoan/kmonad-keymaps/blob/main/cags.kbd.

[kittydoor]

You are insane for writing such a detailed write up on this! And it is incredibly appreciated!!! I have seen things about this before but always ignored it, because it just seemed weird and too complicated. Now that I actually understand it, and you've explained so many of the tradeoffs / thinking behind it, I'm sold :)

[constpetrov]

Thank you so much! Because of the article I did quite a few modifications to my otherwise rusted keyboard configuration, and switched from using vial configurator back to pure qmk fun (my keyboard don't support vial with all needed rules, not enough memory).

This article is indeed an example of how one writes comprehensive yet full and deep guide about not so complex on the surface but surprisingly challenging problem.

[XeroOl]

There is a new trick for homerow mods done with combos: COMBO_MUST_HOLD_MODS
This define makes it so that if your combo is a modifier, you have to hit both keys within the combo period AND also hold for the tapping term, which is incredibly resistant to misfires.
Here are the docs for more info: https://docs.qmk.fm/#/feature_combo?id=modifier-combos

[StefanoRausch]

Your post is a gem! It is an excellent introduction with depth -- exactly what I searched for.

I tried KMonad and did not succeed on my first try. I will look into it at another stage, for I found Kanata (https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/tree/main), which worked out of the box and is well documented for beginners.

[seonglae]

Great! This is exact same idea of creating Intuiter project for increasing people's productivity for any keyboard globally

[knurd75gh]

Thank you very much for the article.
I am a kmonad user and have set up the mod, minus the shift keys, as described here.
My problem is, that I can not get it to work with sticky-keys for shift on lsft and rsft.
It only works for the normal keys, not for the home row modded keys.
should it work? Can these two techniques be combined?

[Erlendms]

With the help of this magnificent guide and karabiner.ts, I got home row mods to work with Karabiner-Elements. 🙌🏻

It has the same features as Kmonad, but is much easier to install. (Especially on Mac! I spent literally 10 hours failing to get Kmonad to work...)

I have a repo with a guide here, and can make more layouts if anyone wants.

It doesn't have permissive hold and ignore mod tap from QMK - but it has way less lag, and a typing feel i greatly prefer.

[argenkiwi]

I put together a repo with the layered keyboard layout I use. I am trying to have the configuration working on different types of keyboard customization software. Keyd and Kanata and practically finished, but I had not found a good way to do home row mods in Karabiner yet. You can see I started implementing it using Goku here, but would I be better off trying karabiner.ts? Home row modifiers and layer swapping/pinning are the two main patterns I am missing at the moment.

[dunyakirkali]

What a comprehensive write up!

[Palpatineli]

I'm using nvim and wsl2 on windows 10 for both coding and prose writing, and did key logging for a few days to find my frequency. Turns out was the most I used by far and the order was actuall ctrl > alt > shift > cmd. Just one data point for your reference.

[Palpatineli]

I meant that ctrl was the most used by far.

[yuanl]

Thanks for this great guide.

A small issue in #finding-the-sweet-spot. The key alias for QK_DYNAMIC_TAPPING_TERM_PRINT should be DT_PRNT instead of DT_PRINT. QMK document here.

[precondition]

Thanks for this great guide.

A small issue in #finding-the-sweet-spot. The key alias for QK_DYNAMIC_TAPPING_TERM_PRINT should be DT_PRNT instead of DT_PRINT. QMK document here.

that moment when you mistype the name of your own feature... thanks, it is fixed.

[TurtleMeds]

Great guide.
Could you add a section for keyd? Here is my config which includes home row mods.

default.conf

[ids]

*

[main]

capslock = overload(arrows, esc)
bookmarks = toggle(gaming)

esc = capslock

# home row mods

a = overloadi(a, overloadt(alt, a, 125), 100)
s = overloadi(s, overloadt(shift, s, 125), 100)
d = overloadi(d, overloadt(control, d, 125), 100)
f = overloadi(f, overloadt(meta, f, 125), 100)

j = overloadi(j, overloadt(meta, j, 125), 100)
k = overloadi(k, overloadt(control, k, 125), 100)
l = overloadi(l, overloadt(shift, l, 125), 100)
; = overloadi(;, overloadt(alt, ;, 125), 100)

[gaming]

a = a
s = s
d = d
f = f

j = j
k = k
l = l
; = ;

[arrows]

h = left
j = down
k = up
l = right

[argenkiwi]

I started a discussion in kanata on how to skip home row modifiers completely when typing at speed to prevent misfires. It was actually inspired by keyd's overloadi action. It would be great if they were added to this post in some way.