i3 Hotkey Viewer

A desktop application for visualizing and analyzing i3wm keyboard shortcuts.

Features

• Interactive keyboard — color-coded keys show binding density at a glance
• Inspector — click any key to see all its bindings, commands, source locations, and conflicts
• Binding table — sortable, filterable, exportable list of every shortcut
• Search — live regex or plain-text search across keys, commands, and modes
• Modifier filter — check Ctrl/Shift/Alt/Super to isolate a chord layer
• Mode filter — switch between default, resize, stats, and other i3 modes
• Statistics — total bindings, unique keys, modes, conflicts, release bindings, variables
• Live reload — watches the config file and re-parses automatically on save
• Conflict detection — highlights duplicate bindings (same key + modifiers + mode, different command)
• Source navigation — double-click any binding to open it in your $EDITOR
• Export — save visible bindings as CSV or JSON from the context menu

Color Legend

Color	Meaning
Gray	No binding
Green	One binding
Yellow	Multiple bindings
Blue	Mode-specific binding
Red	Conflicting bindings
Purple	Release binding
Cyan	Selected

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• PySide6

pip install PySide6

Usage

# Open with a config file directly
python3 main.py ~/.config/i3/config

# Or open the file picker on launch
python3 main.py

Keyboard shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Open file	Ctrl+O
Reload	F5
Zoom in/out	Scroll wheel
Pan	Click and drag

Supported Config Syntax

• set $variable value — variable definitions, resolved before parsing
• bindsym and bindcode — with --release, --no-repeat, --whole-window flags
• mode "name" { ... } — every binding records its owning mode
• include path/to/file — recursive includes with loop detection
• Continuation lines ending in \
• Comments (#)
• Unknown directives are silently skipped (stored as parser warnings)

Project Layout

main.py              — entry point
src/
  parser.py          — i3 config parser
  models.py          — Binding and BindingDatabase data classes
  layouts.py         — keyboard layout definitions (TKL, 60%, Full)
  keyboard_view.py   — interactive keyboard widget (QGraphicsView)
  binding_table.py   — sortable/filterable binding table
  inspector.py       — per-key detail panel
  statistics_panel.py — summary stat cards
  search_bar.py      — live search with regex toggle
  modifier_selector.py — modifier filter checkboxes
  main_window.py     — main window, MVC wiring, live reload
example-config       — sample i3 config for testing

Roadmap

• Config comparison (diff two configs)
• Free shortcut finder (highlight unbound keys for a given modifier set)
• Export to Markdown / HTML / PDF
• Visual binding editor
• Custom keyboard layouts (JSON)
• Sway / Hyprland support