Disable built in keyboard when external connects?

[cakir-enes]

So karabiner had a feature to disable the builtin keyboard when desired keyboards connects, but this feature doesn't work together with kanata. Is there a way to make kanata use this feature of karabiners kext or maybe native kanata way to do this?

[jtroo]

It's surely possible to add, but the feature does not exist today.

[cakir-enes]

@jtroo can I make this happen by writing a tcp client if the key press msg include info about the device id I can just force kanata to switch to no-op layer before handling it, no? Or can I do a similar thing here https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/main/src/kanata/macos.rs you think?

[jtroo]

The change would almost certainly be in this crate and the Kanata code interfacing with said crate: https://github.com/Psych3r/driverkit

[rszyma]

The first proposed solution doesn't sound like a good idea at all (need to implement sending tcp event per key + you wouldn't be able to react to a first key press before being able to reach to event)

[rszyma]

Is this feature implemented as an on/off switch in Karabiner?

[cakir-enes]

Kind of, each external keyboard has a setting called "Disable built in keyboard when connected" setting on ui.

[cakir-enes]

for the curios, since #1493 this get merged now we can tell kanata to ignore builtin keyboard and tell karabiner to disable built in keyboard when X is connected

[AaronVerDow]

I have a rough but working solution.

• Create a layer that disables all keys and add a chord to toggle that layer
• Run two copies of kanata:
  • Internal copy only applies to the internal keyboard, it includes the toggle chord.
  • External copy applies to everything but the internal keyboard, it has the toggle chord removed.

This works, but the finer details of how I'm splitting the configs and excluding the internal keyboard aren't where I want them yet. I can say that so far being able to slap down my bluetooth keyboard directly on my laptop keyboards has been well worth the effort of configuring this.