Products · Product
Karabiner
Raised as a usability problem by 11 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2015–2025), in 8 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Remapping inconsistent because apps use different keybindingsUnreviewed
20152026- Keys remap inconsistently on external keyboard; mappings break and reappear unpredictably over weeks2025-01-30
- Key remapping gets inconsistent because apps use different keybindings for the same actions2023-04-13
- Hard to remap arrow keys to hjkl only in one app2016-10-03
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 11 complaints
- Keys remap inconsistently on external keyboard; mappings break and reappear unpredictably over weeks2025-01-30
- Key remapping gets inconsistent because apps use different keybindings for the same actions2023-04-13
- Hard to configure correctly; remaps sometimes enable caps lock instead2023-02-12
- Config JSON is extremely verbose and hard to manage by hand2022-04-01
- Karabiner's JSON configuration is complicated enough that a separate generator tool was needed2020-05-13
- Configuration file format and dated GUI are hard to work with; adding own mappings is a pain2017-05-19
- Hard to remap arrow keys to hjkl only in one app2016-10-03
- Several gotchas that are non-intuitive to a new user2016-10-02
- Can't figure out how to remap ordinary letter keys; app emphasises special keys2016-10-02
- UI is astonishingly bad, with no specific problem described2016-10-02
- Can't make Caps Lock act as both Escape on tap and Command on hold2015-10-02