Autostart / Stop Kanata on macOS using Hammerspoon + menu tray icon

[plasmadice]

I'm loving Kanata and using it primarily on macOS using this install method (using the Karabiner desktop app). My biggest issue was that I needed to restart Kanata every time I plugged in a new input device. Attempts to automate restarting the service were falling flat. After messing with Hammerspoon, I was able to come up with an overly-complex solution.

Hammerspoon? What's that?

Hammerspoon is an automation tool on macOS. It can be installed manually or with brew. It's configured with an init.lua file. Spoons are packaged hammerspoon configs.

brew install hammerspoon --cask

Okay, but what is it?

Kanata.spoon does it all for me. Starts at boot, keeps it alive, refreshes it when new inputs are detected or when the kanata process stops, quicklinks to config files, and more.

Installing it could be easier, but after you've configure it, you only need to start Hammerspoon.

Clone Kanata.spoon to ~/.hammerspoon/Spoons.

This is my ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua

-- Load the Kanata Spoon
hs.loadSpoon("Kanata")
spoon.Kanata.restartScript = "Spoons/Kanata.spoon/scripts/kanata-restart.sh" -- Required: Path to restart script
spoon.Kanata.logger.setLogLevel('info') -- Optional: Set logger level ('debug', 'info', 'warn', 'error', 'nothing')
spoon.Kanata.kanataConfigPath = os.getenv("HOME") .. "/.config/kanata/kanata.kbd" -- Optional: Path to Kanata config file (default: nil)
spoon.Kanata.checkInterval = 5 -- Optional: Check interval in seconds (default: 5)
spoon.Kanata.port = nil -- Optional: Port for health check API (default: nil)
spoon.Kanata.showMenuBar = true -- Optional: Show menu bar icon (default: true)
spoon.Kanata.startMonitoringOnLoad = true -- Optional: Start monitoring automatically when spoon loads (default: false)
spoon.Kanata.autoStartKanata = true -- Optional: Auto-start Kanata service at system boot (default: false)
spoon.Kanata.useRaycast = true -- Optional: Use Raycast commands for menu integration (default: false)
spoon.Kanata:start()

Instructions at https://github.com/plasmadice/Kanata.spoon. Hopefully this helps another person.