Guides

Using a Mac without a keyboard

A keyboard is the hardest input device to replace, because so much of a Mac assumes one. It is also the one that a lot of people cannot use well: arthritis, a tremor, a missing hand, a wrist that will not survive another year of typing. This guide replaces it in layers. A controller takes the pointer and the twenty keys that matter. Dictation takes sentences. Type Text takes the phrases you type every day. And the keyboard itself stays in a drawer, available if a password demands it.

Layer one: the pointer and the twenty keys

Start with the built-in Desktop Navigation preset or the Easy Mac preset. A stick moves the pointer, a stick scrolls, a button clicks. Then the keys that a Mac cannot live without, all on the controller: Return, Escape, Tab and Shift Tab, the arrows, Delete, Space, Command Tab, Command Q, Command W, Command Z. Twenty rows, and most of the day is covered without a keyboard. The No Keyboard preset on this page has all of them.

Layer two: dictation

macOS dictation is good now, and it types into any text field. Turn it on in System Settings, Keyboard, then bind Start Dictation to a button; the built-in presets use Back / Share. Press to speak, press to stop. Punctuation is spoken: comma, full stop, new line. For long writing, it is faster than most people type.

On a MacBook, the Tap the Mac preset starts dictation from three knocks on the palm rest, which means a hand that can make a fist can write an email with nothing held at all.

Layer three: the things you type every day

Type Text is an output that types a whole string from one press. Give a hold or a double tap on spare buttons your email address, your name, your street address, a greeting, a sign-off. A chord layer (hold LB, press a face button) adds four more. Ten phrases cover most of what a person types into forms and messages, and they come out spelled right every time.

Layer four: passwords and the rest

Passwords are the one thing dictation must not be used for. Two answers: the Mac's Passwords app and Touch ID fill almost all of them without typing, and for the rest, the macOS Accessibility Keyboard (System Settings, Accessibility, Keyboard, Accessibility Keyboard) puts a full keyboard on screen that a controller-driven pointer can click. Open it once and it stays available from the menu bar.

Modifier keys from a controller

A row can send a whole chord, such as Command Shift 4, as one output, so shortcuts do not need the modifier held. When a real held modifier is needed, for example Shift while clicking to extend a selection, bind Shift to a button with Toggle mode: press once to hold it, press again to release. The Toggle Mode preset shows this.

Chords: a second layer on every button

With sixteen buttons and one chord modifier you have thirty-two commands. Hold LB and the face buttons become Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo; hold RB and they become the four apps you use most, through Open App. The work guide builds a complete office layout this way.

Making it safe

Keep the emergency stop in mind: the two-second hold on the Home / PS / Guide button stops everything without a keyboard. And give the preset a light bar colour so you can see it is running. If a controller ever disconnects, a preset that uses only Tap the Mac or a cursor region keeps working, which is one reason to have a knock bound to dictation as a fallback.

Download

• No Keyboard presetPointer and scroll on the sticks, the twenty essential keys, dictation, and a chord layer with Type Text slots ready to fill in. 19 KB

Open a downloaded preset with InputConfig, or drag it onto the app icon. It lands in the sidebar, ready to activate or edit. Any launch target inside a preset file is cleared on import; add one yourself in the editor if you want it.

Questions

Related

• A controller for an older parent
• Working from a controller
• Dictation, zoom, and speak selection
• Tap the Mac
• Macros, turbo, and toggle