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Life & fun · April 15, 2026

US keyboards don't have enough keys, so I switched to Japanese

A Karabiner-Elements config that uses the extra keys on an Apple JIS keyboard to build a US-compatible layout with a Hyper key, Vim navigation, window tiling, and modular accent support for Italian, French, Spanish, and German.

US keyboards don't have enough keys, so I switched to Japanese launched on April 15, 2026 with 7 votes, #1,538 of 21,247 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit simone.org ↗Alternativestop 7% of April 2026

What it does

A Karabiner-Elements config that uses the extra keys on an Apple JIS keyboard to build a US-compatible layout with a Hyper key, Vim navigation, window tiling, and modular accent support for Italian, French, Spanish, and German. I needed a keyboard that could do four things at once: US-standard shortcuts for coding, Vim-style cursor movement, a Hyper key for launchers and scripts, and Italian accented vowels without switching input sources. A standard US keyboard doesn't have enough keys for all of that. Something always has to share a binding with something else. Apple's Japanese keyboard has more keys than its US equivalent. Two extra keys sit on either side of the spacebar (Eisuu and…from simone.org

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