Leader Key

The leader key acts as a prefix to a key sequence. These can be used to trigger macros quickly without dedicated keys set to each function. For those of you who dislike key combos, such as Ctrl+Shift+Esc, then this feature is for you. This is very much inspired from vim.

Keycode

Key	Description
`KC.LEAD`	The [Leader key]

Enabling the extention

from kmk.extensions.leader import Leader
from kmk.handlers.sequences import send_string

leader_ext = Leader(}
)
 
keyboard.extensions.append(leader_ext)

Leader key sequences can be as long or short as you like. The action be a keycode, or can be things like unicode macros, or generic macros. The example below shows how you would trigger task manager in Windows with a leader sequence.

Assign a key to KC.LEAD
Above your keymap, include a LEADER_DICTIONARY.

from kmk.macros.simple import simple_key_sequence

# ...

leader_ext = Leader(
    sequences={
    'task': : simple_key_sequence([Modifiers.KC_LCTRL(Modifiers.KC_LSHIFT(Common.KC_ESC))])
    }
)

keymap = [...KC.LEAD,...]

# ...

Modes

LeaderMode.TIMEOUT (the default)
LeaderMode.ENTER

Timeout Mode

Will expire after a timer and trigger the sequence that matches if any. The default timeout is 1000ms

Enter Mode

Has no timeout. To end sequence press the enter key, or cancel and do nothing, press escape.

Changing defaults

To change the mode or timeout, add them here

from kmk.extensions.leader import Leader, LeaderMode
leader_ext = Leader(
    mode=LeaderMode.ENTER,
    timeout=1000
    sequences={
    'hello': send_string('hello world from kmk macros'),
    }
)

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