global_hotkey lets you register Global HotKeys for Desktop Applications.

Platforms-supported:

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux (X11 and Wayland)

Wayland Support

On Wayland, global hotkeys are registered via the XDG GlobalShortcuts portal. Desktop environment support:

Desktop Environment	Minimum Version	Status
KDE Plasma	5.27+	Supported
GNOME	48+	Supported
Hyprland	0.20+	Supported

For desktop environments that don't yet support the GlobalShortcuts portal (e.g. GNOME < 48), set GDK_BACKEND=x11 to fall back to the X11 backend via XWayland.

Set the GLOBAL_HOTKEY_APP_ID environment variable to your application's ID for proper D-Bus registration (falls back to FLATPAK_ID or com.global-hotkey.app).

Platform-specific notes:

• On Windows a win32 event loop must be running on the thread. It doesn't need to be the main thread but you have to create the global hotkey manager on the same thread as the event loop.
• On macOS, an event loop must be running on the main thread so you also need to create the global hotkey manager on the main thread.
• On Linux (Wayland), a tokio multi-thread runtime is used internally for the D-Bus event loop.
• On Linux (X11), no special event loop requirements.

Feature Flags

Feature Flag	Description	Default
tokio	Use tokio async runtime	Yes
async-io	Use the async-io runtime	No
serde	Serialisation & Deserialisation	No
tracing	Diagnostic Infromation	No

Example

use global_hotkey::{GlobalHotKeyManager, hotkey::{HotKey, Modifiers, Code}};

// initialize the hotkeys manager
let manager = GlobalHotKeyManager::new().unwrap();

// construct the hotkey
let hotkey = HotKey::new(Some(Modifiers::SHIFT), Code::KeyD);

// register it
manager.register(hotkey);

Processing global hotkey events

You can also listen for the menu events using GlobalHotKeyEvent::receiver to get events for the hotkey pressed events.

use global_hotkey::GlobalHotKeyEvent;

if let Ok(event) = GlobalHotKeyEvent::receiver().try_recv() {
    println!("{:?}", event);
}

License

Apache-2.0/MIT