Karabiner-Elements and Hyperkey: the best keyboard trigger for a radial menu

Every radial menu needs a trigger. The trigger is the thing you press to make the wedges appear. Most people pick whatever hotkey is convenient — F19, Option+Space, a mouse side button — and move on. That is fine, but it leaves the single best option on the table: a Hyper key.

A Hyper key is one physical key that fires all four modifiers at once — Command, Shift, Option, and Control. Because no real macOS shortcut uses all four together, a Hyper-prefixed binding cannot collide with anything. And because the canonical place to put it is Caps Lock, it sits under your left pinky in home position. Press once, flick, release. That is the entire interaction.

This is a pragmatic guide to wiring Caps Lock → Hyper → Swik using either of the two tools that do the remap: Karabiner-Elements (the keyboard-remapping powerhouse) or Hyperkey (a free single-purpose app from the Raycast team). Both are free. Both work. They produce the same trigger.

Why Hyper is the right trigger

Most launcher hotkeys are a compromise. Option+Space is taken by Spotlight or Alfred. Command+Space is also Spotlight. F19 works but you have to look down to find it. A mouse side button is great for the mouse hand but useless when you are typing.

Hyper avoids all of these problems by being the one combination of modifiers that nothing else uses. It has three properties no other hotkey has at the same time:

• It cannot conflict. No app ships a default shortcut with Cmd+Shift+Opt+Ctrl, because a four-modifier chord is unusable as a normal binding. The Hyper namespace is yours alone.
• It is a single physical key. Even though it sends four modifiers, you only press one key. There is no chord to coordinate, no finger gymnastics.
• It is in home position. Caps Lock is under the left pinky on every Mac keyboard ever made. You do not look, you do not reach, you do not move your hand.

Bind a radial menu to Hyper+Space (or just Hyper, if your remapper supports it as a standalone trigger), and the path from intent to launched app is shorter than any other keyboard trigger you can build on macOS.

Karabiner-Elements: the full-control option

Karabiner-Elements is the long-running, open-source keyboard remapper for macOS, maintained by Takayama Fumihiko at pqrs.org. It is free, actively maintained, and the standard tool for serious keyboard customization on the Mac. If you have ever seen someone with a wild custom layout, they are almost certainly running Karabiner.

Karabiner sees your keyboard at the lowest level the OS allows and rewrites events before any app sees them. It uses a JSON configuration format that you can write by hand or generate from the Karabiner-Elements UI. The community-shared "Complex Modifications" library has hundreds of pre-built rules, including a Caps Lock → Hyper rule that is one click to install.

The trade-off: Karabiner does much more than make a Hyper key, and the depth shows in the UI. There are tabs for simple modifications, complex modifications, function keys, devices, profiles, and event viewer. For a single Hyper remap this is overkill, but if you also want layered modifiers, per-app rules, or a tap-vs-hold distinction (Caps Lock as Escape on tap, Hyper on hold — a popular setup), Karabiner is the only tool that does it.

Setting up Hyper in Karabiner

• Install Karabiner-Elements from karabiner-elements.pqrs.org. Grant the input-monitoring and accessibility permissions it requests.
• Open the app and go to Complex Modifications → Add predefined rule.
• Search for "Caps Lock" and pick a rule like "Change caps_lock to command+control+option+shift" — this is the canonical Hyper mapping. There are also tap-vs-hold variants if you want Caps Lock to still type Escape on a quick tap.
• Click Enable. Test by holding Caps Lock and pressing a letter — it should fire as if you held all four modifiers.

Hyperkey: the set-and-forget option

Hyperkey is a free, single-purpose app made by the Raycast team. You can find it at raycast.com/hyperkey. It does one thing: turn a key (typically Caps Lock) into Hyper, with an optional fallback so a quick tap still types Escape. The settings panel is one screen. Setup is roughly thirty seconds.

Hyperkey exists because the Raycast team wanted a friction-free way for launcher users to get a Hyper key without having to learn Karabiner's full surface area. It has no JSON, no rule library, no complex modifications. If your only goal is "make Caps Lock into Hyper so I can bind a launcher to it," Hyperkey is the right answer. It is also a good gateway: you can start with Hyperkey today and move to Karabiner later if you decide you want more.

Setting up Hyper in Hyperkey

• Download Hyperkey from raycast.com/hyperkey. It is free and standalone — you do not need to install Raycast itself.
• Grant accessibility permission when prompted.
• In the settings, set the trigger key to Caps Lock. Confirm all four modifier toggles (Command, Option, Control, Shift) are on.
• Optionally enable the "tap to send Escape" fallback so a short tap still types Escape — useful for vim users.

That is the entire setup. Hyper is now under your left pinky.

Side by side: Karabiner vs Hyperkey

Wiring Hyper into Swik

Once Hyper exists as a usable modifier, binding it to a radial menu is straightforward. Swik accepts any keyboard hotkey as a trigger, including modifier-heavy combinations, so you can simply record Hyper+Space and you are done.

• Open Swik settings and go to the Trigger section.
• Click Record hotkey.
• Hold Caps Lock (now Hyper) and press Space.
• Swik captures the binding as Cmd+Shift+Opt+Ctrl+Space and saves it.

From now on, holding Caps Lock+Space pops the radial menu. Flick toward the wedge you want and release. The menu closes and the action fires. The whole motion takes about a quarter of a second once it is in muscle memory, and your hands never leave home row.

If you prefer a single-key trigger, Karabiner can also map Caps Lock alone (no second key) to a function key like F19, and you bind Swik to that. This is even faster — one key, no chord — at the cost of losing Caps Lock for everything else. Pick whichever feels right.

What to put on the wedges

The trigger is half the equation. The other half is what the wedges do. A Hyper-triggered radial menu is best used for the things you reach for by reflex while typing — the apps and actions you do not want to break flow for.

• Top apps as wedges. Browser, editor, terminal, Slack, Figma, notes app. Eight wedges covers almost everyone's daily rotation.
• Apple Shortcuts (Pro). One wedge for "start focus mode," another for "open my deep-work window layout." Hyper is exactly the trigger you want for these — they are the shortcuts you need now, in the middle of typing.
• Clipboard ring. A wedge that opens a sub-menu of your last eight clips. Hyper-flick-flick and the right snippet pastes itself.
• Emoji picker. Categories on the outer ring, picks on the inner ring. Faster than the system Cmd+Ctrl+Space picker because you never see a search box.
• Insert text. Wedges that paste your email signature, your calendar link, the boilerplate disclaimer your team uses. Pure muscle memory.
• Profiles. Different menu on home Wi-Fi versus office Wi-Fi. Different menu when an external display is attached. The Hyper trigger stays the same; what it summons changes with context.

Free Swik gives you five wedges, which is enough to test the setup. Pro is $9 one-time and unlocks unlimited wedges, profiles, and Apple Shortcuts integration.

Honest caveats

A few things to know before you commit to this setup:

• You lose Caps Lock as Caps Lock. Most people do not care, but if you write a lot of all-caps text, enable the tap-vs-hold variant so a short tap still types something useful (Escape is the standard choice; some people use it for actual Caps Lock by toggling).
• Karabiner needs deep system permissions. Input monitoring and accessibility. The app is open source and well-trusted, but it does ask for serious access. Hyperkey asks for less because it does less.
• External keyboards behave the same. Both tools work across all attached keyboards by default. If you want Hyper only on the built-in keyboard, Karabiner can scope rules per device; Hyperkey cannot.
• One trigger is not a religion. If you also use a mouse side button for the radial menu, that is great — Swik supports both at once. Hyper is the best keyboard trigger; the mouse side button is the best mouse trigger. Use whichever hand is free.

The full stack, summarized

The whole setup, end to end, is small:

• Karabiner-Elements or Hyperkey — both free — to remap Caps Lock to Hyper.
• Swik bound to Hyper+Space (or Hyper alone via a Karabiner-routed F-key).
• Eight wedges covering your top apps, a Shortcut or two, and maybe the clipboard ring.

Three pieces. Two of them free. One $9 one-time payment if you outgrow the free tier. The result is a launcher that lives under your left pinky, never conflicts with anything, and gets you to any of your top apps in roughly a quarter of a second without your hands ever leaving home row.

Karabiner is doing the part it is best at — remapping a key. Swik is doing the part it is best at — turning that key into a menu of actions. Neither tool tries to be the other, which is exactly why they pair well.