1Your brand here: book this slot2Your brand here: book this slot3Your brand here: book this slot4Your brand here: book this slot5Your brand here: book this slot1Your brand here: book this slot2Your brand here: book this slot3Your brand here: book this slot4Your brand here: book this slot5Your brand here: book this slot
6Your brand here: book this slot7Your brand here: book this slot8Your brand here: book this slot9Your brand here: book this slot10Your brand here: book this slot6Your brand here: book this slot7Your brand here: book this slot8Your brand here: book this slot9Your brand here: book this slot10Your brand here: book this slot
Skip to content
Day 65: new resources are added every day. See what's new
Best Productivity ResourcesBy Shushant LakhyaniVerified creator

Desktop App

Kanata

A keyboard remapper that adds layers, shortcuts and home-row modifiers.

Visit Kanata4.5

  • Rating

    4.5 / 5

  • Pricing

    Free

  • Difficulty

    Advanced

  • Works on

    macOS, Windows, Linux

Built with love by Shushant Lakhyani. Building bestproductivityresources.com

Free: 1,100+ ways people make money onlineFree: 399+ ways to make money online

What is Kanata?

Kanata is a free, open-source keyboard remapper that works on any keyboard. Turn Caps Lock into Escape and Control, add layers for numbers and arrows, set up tap-and-hold keys and build shortcut combos in one config file, so your hands stay on the home row and repetitive typing gets faster.

Third-party open-source projects. We are not affiliated with their authors; repositories are provided as-is by their maintainers. Review each project's license, code and security before installing. See our Disclaimer.

Pros: what Kanata does well

  • Works the same on Windows, Mac and Linux
  • Powerful layers and tap-hold keys
  • Free and open source

Cons: where it falls short

  • Set up through a text config file
  • macOS needs an extra driver

Who Kanata is for

Keyboard-heavy users who want custom layouts on any keyboard.

Who can skip it

Anyone happy with their default keyboard layout.

Kanata alternatives

Not sold on Kanata? These do a similar job, and each card says what it has in common.

All Personal Productivity resources

Karabiner-Elements

Focus: hyper key and macos. Shares keyboard remapping and shortcuts with Kanata. A Mac app, not a desktop app. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Mac AppFreemacOS
4.7Visit

Hammerspoon

Focus: mac automation, window management and lua scripting. Shares open source and github with Kanata. A Mac app, not a desktop app. Rated 4.6 (Kanata: 4.5).

Mac AppFreemacOS, Offline
4.6Visit

RaycastEditor's pick, verified

Focus: launcher and keyboard. Shares shortcuts with Kanata. Freemium (Kanata: Free). Adds iOS. Rated 4.9 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFree planmacOS, Windows
4.9Visit

AutoHotkey

Focus: hotkeys, macros and scripting. Shares open source with Kanata. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreeWindows, Offline
4.7Visit

fzf

Focus: fuzzy finder, command line and shell. Shares open source and github with Kanata. Rated 4.8 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreemacOS, Windows
4.8Visit

lazygit

Focus: git client, terminal ui and developer tool. Shares open source and github with Kanata. Rated 4.8 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreemacOS, Windows
4.8Visit

Free alternatives to Kanata

Want to spend nothing? These free picks cover similar ground.

Atuin

Focus: shell history, terminal and command line. Shares open source and github with Kanata. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreemacOS, Linux
4.7Visit

Microsoft PowerToys

Focus: launcher, command palette and windows utilities. Shares open source with Kanata. A Windows app, not a desktop app. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Windows AppFreeWindows
4.7Visit

OCRmyPDF

Focus: ocr, scanned pdf and command line. Shares open source and github with Kanata. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreemacOS, Windows
4.7Visit

rclone

Focus: cloud sync, backup and file transfer. Shares open source and github with Kanata. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreeWindows, macOS
4.7Visit

scrcpy

Focus: android, screen mirroring and phone control. Shares open source and github with Kanata. Adds Android. Rated 4.7 (Kanata: 4.5).

Desktop AppFreeWindows, macOS
4.7Visit
Are you the maker of Kanata?Get a free Featured badge for your site, a share image and ready-to-paste posts. No sign-up.

New · updated daily

What people are actually doing with AI

Real use cases shared on Reddit, Hacker News, X, GitHub and blogs, summarised in plain words with a link to every original post.

Browse AI use cases

Free Notion database

1,100+ ways people are making money online

Real online businesses, creators and projects, broken down by how they make money: apps, online stores, AI tools and more. Free on Gumroad.

Get the free database

Free Notion database

399+ ways to make money online

Hundreds of online income methods in one place, so you can compare options and pick one to try. Free on Gumroad.

Get the free list

For research and ideas only. Results vary and nothing here is a promise of income. See our Disclaimer.

Weekly newsletter

Everything new, every Monday.

One short email every Monday with everything shipped that week: new free tools and websites, new guides, new free browser tools and what's new in my free Gumroad libraries, plus how the site is growing. Free, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Join the newsletter

You sign up on Gumroad, which stores your email to send the newsletter. See our Privacy Policy.