shortcutd

Global shortcuts using evdev

What

shortcutd is a daemon and client library to allow listening for global shortcuts for systems that don't support it otherwise (such as wayland).

The shortcutd daemon hooks into the evdev system and exposes a dbus interface for clients to hook into to. By separating out the code that hooks into evdev (which needs to be done as root) into a separate daemon it allows non-privileged users to hook into global shortcuts.

Protection against clients using the shortcutd daemon for a keylogger is done by only allowing shortcuts that contain at least one modifier key.

Starting the daemon

• Copy the dbus configuration nl.icewind.shortcutd.conf into /etc/dbus-1/system.d/
• Start the daemon as root (or use the provided systemd service).

Rust api

use shortcutd::{Shortcut, ShortcutClient};
use std::error::Error;
use std::time::Duration;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    let mut client = ShortcutClient::new()?;

    let shortcut: Shortcut = "<Ctrl><Alt>-KeyP".parse()?;

    client.register(shortcut, |s| {
        eprintln!("shortcut1 {}", s);
    })?;

    let shortcut: Shortcut = "<Ctrl><Alt>-KeyO".parse()?;

    client.register(shortcut, |s| {
        eprintln!("shortcut2 {}", s);
    })?;

    loop {
        client.process(Duration::from_millis(1000))?;
    }
}

D-Bus api

• register a new shortcut using the Register method at nl.icewind.shortcutd/register
• listen to the signal at the path returned from the Register method to get notified when the shortcut is triggered