Your keyboard coach on the menu bar. It watches how you type, spots the slow habits — five backspaces to fix one word, twenty arrows to cross a paragraph — and shows you the shortcut that replaces them. When you start using it, LessMouse notices, and celebrates.
Born from the essay 《AI 时代，你更需要用好快捷键》 ("In the AI era, you need keyboard shortcuts more than ever") — the argument that in an AI era the handful of things you still do by hand deserve to be done fast. Reading about shortcuts doesn't build habits; a coach that sees your actual habits does.
- LessMouse counts the keys you press — only shortcuts and navigation keys, as aggregate counts (see Privacy below).
- When a slow pattern repeats enough in a day (say, three bursts of five-plus backspaces), a green dot appears on the menu bar ⌘ icon.
- Click it: the card shows what was seen, what to press instead, drawn as keycaps — and more than one way in, because coaching isn't prescribing.
- The next time you press the taught shortcut, the card flips to adopted and the banner says so. Progress lands on the stats page.
- Today's ledger — key events counted, slow patterns detected, distinct shortcuts used, refreshed as you type.
- A coaching inbox — cards appear only when a habit is real (thresholds are "unmistakable", not "technically possible"); unread ones carry the green dot and a new pill.
- Adoption detection — press a taught shortcut after reading its card and the celebration banner fires, once, ever. The stats page tracks how many of the coached shortcuts you've taken up.
- Stats — most-used shortcuts over the last 7 days, adoption progress, days observed.
- Pause tracking — stops the keyboard listener completely: nothing is watched at all.
- Excluded apps — password managers, banking, anything you name; excluded apps aren't even observed.
- Launch at login — lives in the menu bar from the moment you log in.
- English and 简体中文, following the system language, switchable in settings.
- Erase everything — one two-tap action; the old data file is archived on disk first. History is kept to 60 days automatically.
LessMouse never records what you type. The event filter is ~20 lines with a test that sweeps every keycode × modifier combination to keep it that way.
What is counted, nothing else:
- Shortcuts — keystrokes with ⌘/⌥/⌃ held (
cmd+c,opt+backspace) - Navigation keys — backspace, arrows, Home/End, PageUp/Down, Esc, Tab, F-keys
- Detected slow patterns — "backspace-burst fired 4 times today"
Three defenses deep:
| Defense | What it does |
|---|---|
| Signature filter | Bare letters and ⇧+letters are text — dropped before anything is kept. Held-key autorepeat never counts. |
| Secure input guard | While a password sheet has focus, LessMouse observes nothing at all. |
| Exclusions | Any app can be excluded entirely; excluded apps aren't even watched. |
All data lives in one human-readable file —
~/Library/Application Support/LessMouse/stats.json — opened from the stats
page or by hand, deleted from settings. The codebase has zero network code
and zero third-party dependencies; audit it, that's the point of open
source.
From source (no Apple Developer account needed anywhere):
git clone https://github.com/AGIHunt/lessmouse.git
cd LessMouse
scripts/make-app.sh # builds, bundles, ad-hoc signs → dist/LessMouse.zipUnzip, then right-click LessMouse.app → Open (twice on first launch) —
Gatekeeper's standard dance for unsigned-but-honest software. Drag it into
/Applications if it sticks.
First run — Input Monitoring. LessMouse asks for the Input Monitoring
permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring): a
listen-only keyboard tap is what counts patterns, and Input Monitoring is the
permission macOS requires for it — Accessibility alone is not enough. If
the app still says "needs permission" after granting, quit and reopen it
once; macOS caches tap refusals per launch. After installing a new
download (ad-hoc builds re-identify on every build), remove the old
LessMouse entry in Input Monitoring and add the new one. Maintainers signing
with a stable identity (CODESIGN_IDENTITY=… scripts/make-app.sh) don't
re-grant.
swift build # build
swift test # 60 tests: privacy sweeps, detector, engine, layout
swift run LessMouse # run from CLI (see note)macOS 14+, Swift 5.9+, zero dependencies. swift run works for development,
but TCC attributes the permission to your terminal — for the real experience
build the app (scripts/make-app.sh) and launch that.
| You keep… | LessMouse teaches |
|---|---|
| Burst-deleting letters | ⌥⌫ delete word · ⌘⌫ delete to line start |
| Crawling with ← → | ⌥←/⌥→ hop by word · ⌘←/⌘→ line start/end |
| Selecting char by char | ⌥⇧←/→ select by word · ⇧⌘→ select to line end |
| Scrolling documents | ⌘↑/⌘↓ document start/end |
| Using Home/End | ⌘←/⌘→ — the Mac way |
| Never touching ⌘` | switching windows of one app (taught after days of multi-app work without it) |
| Moving by arrow alone | ⌃A/⌃E/⌃P/⌃N — the Emacs keys every Mac text field knows |
| Switching apps by mouse | ⌘⇥ — when app switches are many but ⌘Tab's share of them is tiny |
| Switching browser tabs by mouse | ⌃⇥ / ⇧⌃⇥ — after days of browser use without them |
Cards cool down when read but not adopted (3–5 days), disappear forever when dismissed, and celebrate exactly once when adopted.
The menu bar icon isn't there. If you use a menu bar manager (Bartender, Ice, Vanilla…), new items often start hidden — set LessMouse to Always Shown in its settings. On notched MacBooks, a crowded bar collapses items into the hidden zone past the notch. LessMouse itself never removes its icon.
I granted Accessibility and nothing happened. That's the wrong pane — the app needs Input Monitoring (see Install). The permission page's button opens the right one.
Why does opt+a show up in my stats? On some layouts ⌥+letter types a
character (å, ∆…). LessMouse counts the combination ("opt+a: 3") — an
aggregate count, never the text around it. Exclude the app if you'd rather
not count it at all.
Where is my data, and how do I nuke it? One file:
~/Library/Application Support/LessMouse/ (stats.json + suggestions.json,
both human-readable). Settings → Erase all data archives and resets them.
Something looks wedged. Quit and reopen LessMouse — the event tap is re-built on every launch. Still stuck? File an issue with the app version (Settings → storage path shows the build).
PRs welcome — including the Windows port, which the architecture was shaped for (see CONTRIBUTING.md).
MIT — see LICENSE.