Who use only keyboard and no mouse?

[Anon44]

Hello everyone,

I have won in productivity by using almost only my keyboard and almost never the mouse nor the trackpad.

I am at 90% keyboard and 10% mouse I would say.

Are they people who use 100% keyboard and no mouse/trackpad at all?

If yes, do you have any tips?

Thanks

[zeroni13]

For me it really depends on what OS I'm using.
In Linux I'm about 99%keyboard because everything is done trough the terminal.
In windows I'm about 80-90% because it's not as user friendly as Linux.

Do you have any reason to only use the keyboard? If you feel you are efficient enough now with 90% is there any reason to try and only use the keyboard?

[Anon44]

If you feel you are efficient enough now with 90% is there any reason to try and only use the keyboard?

I don't feel efficient enough. Everytime that I have to use my mouse, I feel like my productivity is just going down.

I slowly learn new tips to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, and each time my productivity raise a little.

[acantha]

vimium/vimperator/etc really improved my hand on keys percentage, so i would say for real work i'm in the 90s on a mac. in yosemite theres a new automation api thats substantially better than the old hack of using the accessibility layers and i'm hopeful that translates to a full keyboard based control of the UI.

[spiceBar]

vimium/vimperator/etc really improved my hand on keys percentage, so i would say for real work i'm in the 90s on a mac. in yosemite theres a new automation api thats substantially better than the old hack of using the accessibility layers and i'm hopeful that translates to a full keyboard based control of the UI.

You mean OOB, or by programming?

I have not tried Yosemite yet. I'm already trying iOS 8, that's enough crashes for me.

[acantha]

vimium/vimperator/etc really improved my hand on keys percentage, so i would say for real work i'm in the 90s on a mac. in yosemite theres a new automation api thats substantially better than the old hack of using the accessibility layers and i'm hopeful that translates to a full keyboard based control of the UI.

You mean OOB, or by programming?

I have not tried Yosemite yet. I'm already trying iOS 8, that's enough crashes for me.

right now its just an API. You can check it out here: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/releasenotes/InterapplicationCommunication/RN-JavaScriptForAutomation/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014508

whats cool about it is that its pretty clean to write in, and you could, in theory, write a wrapper with it that would let you do a substantial portion of your work by typing in what you want to access (ie "click file, click open*, select filename.txt, etc). its not impossible to write such a thing now, but the way that the automation was implemented was unreliable at best. this api offers the ability to natively interact with any application via the command line.

what i'm envisioning (and maybe i'll do this myself, if i can bother to learn some java instead of python) is just like how you might have a different layer on your keyboard for different function keys, you'd bring up a UI layer via hotkey, and then as you typed it would interactively try and interpret your commands into UI actions. its a bit of a pipe dream of mine to reach that point, and this is the first time i've seen something that i thought would do it.

[spiceBar]

vimium/vimperator/etc really improved my hand on keys percentage, so i would say for real work i'm in the 90s on a mac. in yosemite theres a new automation api thats substantially better than the old hack of using the accessibility layers and i'm hopeful that translates to a full keyboard based control of the UI.

You mean OOB, or by programming?

I have not tried Yosemite yet. I'm already trying iOS 8, that's enough crashes for me.

right now its just an API. You can check it out here: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/releasenotes/InterapplicationCommunication/RN-JavaScriptForAutomation/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014508

whats cool about it is that its pretty clean to write in, and you could, in theory, write a wrapper with it that would let you do a substantial portion of your work by typing in what you want to access (ie "click file, click open*, select filename.txt, etc). its not impossible to write such a thing now, but the way that the automation was implemented was unreliable at best. this api offers the ability to natively interact with any application via the command line.

what i'm envisioning (and maybe i'll do this myself, if i can bother to learn some java instead of python) is just like how you might have a different layer on your keyboard for different function keys, you'd bring up a UI layer via hotkey, and then as you typed it would interactively try and interpret your commands into UI actions. its a bit of a pipe dream of mine to reach that point, and this is the first time i've seen something that i thought would do it.

Looks promising. Thanks.

[Frenir]

I've actually been considering to try and only use my keyboard.

Perhaps I should make some media functions and such for my hhkb with autohotkey.

[airlangga07]

In Linux I'm about 99%keyboard because everything is done trough the terminal.

same here, firefox/iceweasel + vimperator, and stack/tiling windows manager like i3wm really help me.

[Betty]

On Linux I spend my whole day with hands on the keyboard, so 100% keyboard action. In a busy week with a lot of coding my mouse has a layer of dust upon it.

You only have to have the right tools and this is realy comfortable and much faster.
I use Firefox with pentadactyl which is imho much better then any other vim-style input on any other browser. The truth is, I would like to switch to an other browser, but pentadactyl makes me to stay with firefox.
As file manager I use the command line, with or without ranger, and konqueror.
As editor vim, but emacs would of course be good as well.
As mail client you could use mutt or alpine but thunderbird can be operated with the keyboard well enough.
As window manager I use the awesome window manager but there are a lot of alternatives.
For everything else there is a command line program: cmus, imagemagic, xrandr, zathura etc.

[Anon44]

Pentadactyl is just awesome, this is exactly what I wanted, however when I use it, some shortcuts no longer work.

For example I can't open new tab with "ctrl+t".

Furthermore, I don't like all the modification Pentadactyl does to Firefox. I would like only the ability to open new link with the keyboard, but I don't want any other modification. Do you know if this is possible?

[Anon44]

OK I have found what I searched: Vimium for chrome.

It does exactly what I wanted: it opens new links with only the keyboard, but don't modify anything else, and it works with chrome (my favourite browser).

I am so happy, this is so awesome.

I will try to use ONLY the keyboard from now on.

That's thanks to your answer that I have been able to find Vimium for chrome. Thank you so much, and I recommend to everyone Vimium (even if I use it only since 5 minutes ^^).

[Jagriff]

Pentadactyl is just awesome, this is exactly what I wanted, however when I use it, some shortcuts no longer work.

For example I can't open new tab with "ctrl+t".

Furthermore, I don't like all the modification Pentadactyl does to Firefox. I would like only the ability to open new link with the keyboard, but I don't want any other modification. Do you know if this is possible?

I'm not sure about Pentadactyl, but my experience with Vimperator says that it probably uses another hotkey for new tabs. Vimperator does this with t/T (or P if you want to lookup something in your clipboard), which is much quicker than ctrl+t.

[Smasher816]

stack/tiling windows manager like i3wm really help me.

This. So much this.

After using i3 at my house for a few months going back to a windows computer at work was torture. I ended up installing a virtual machine just to get my favorite window manager back. Being able to open programs, close programs, move windows between screen/virtual-desktops, switch views, etc all from the keyboard is just so nice. Picking up the mouse, moving to the start bar, and clicking your window is so much work - especially if you have to repeatedly swap between your internet browser and text editor (testing website development).

[Betty]

stack/tiling windows manager like i3wm really help me.

This. So much this.

After using i3 at my house for a few months going back to a windows computer at work was torture. I ended up installing a virtual machine just to get my favorite window manager back. Being able to open programs, close programs, move windows between screen/virtual-desktops, switch views, etc all from the keyboard is just so nice. Picking up the mouse, moving to the start bar, and clicking your window is so much work - especially if you have to repeatedly swap between your internet browser and text editor (testing website development).

Not only is it really much work to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse just to do some navigating, but it is slow, dead slow.
Sometimes, when I am forced to use a different OS, or even a different window manager, it feels instantly unproductive.

On the pentadactyl and tabs thing: you can either move the ctrl+n and ctrl+p or (just like in vim) change the tab with gt and gT.
Vimperator and other are just not as consistent, e.g. in pentadactyl you can make a bookmark with :bmark -title [title] -keyword kw and then open the page via the bookmark page
or, which is much faster, with :open kw.

[SonOfSonOfSpock]

I use the keyboard as much as possible. Also, I use a touchpad instead of a mouse. It sucks for a lot of "mouse" intensive things, but when I'm really going writing code and just need a small cursor movement I feel it's faster than a mouse since I skip a step by not needing to grab a mouse. Also, since it is not a great pointing device for lots of mouse movements it forces me to use the keyboard more.

I'll have to look up all these addons for browsers. I didnt know they were out there.

[davkol]

Yesterday, I spent several hours on my desktop without having any pointing device connected. I use KDE Plasma Desktop Workspace, Yakuake and Firefox w/ VimFX. The best part is that there's nearly no learning curve (i.e. I don't spend more time optimizing my workflow than I'd save by the optimization).

I love my trackball though. It's so much fun to scroll with it.

[microsoft windows]

I wonder how computers would be if we went back to using a command line style operating system. I'd personally prefer it to all that touch screen stuff they're pushing these days.

[osi]

While possible,  I believe it is slightly impractical to nix a mouse completely. Even in CLI environments, copy+pasta comes in handy.

Sure, we can get around easily with keyboard only but why?? It's inevtiable that you'll run into something that requires a mouse function that cannot be skirted around with a keyboard shortcut or key.

Quite ambitious of a task if you ask me!

[Anon44]

If you want to copy paste, it is quicker with the keyboard in approximately 99% of the situation. Just use the arrow to move at the point that you want to start the copy, then alt+arrow to select, then ctlr+c and ctrl+v. If you have a lot of text to select you can either do ctrl+a or alt+ctrl+arrow.

The purpose of using the keyboard instead of a mouse is not to sacrifice handiness to productivity, this is really more easy to do it with the keyboard.

[Lammie]

Can't live without my mouse. Can coordinate just so much faster.