Modes overview

Think of KeySteer as three operating layers: Idle waits quietly, Normal handles everyday movement and clicking, and a targeting mode helps you find an exact target.

All three targeting modes return to Normal with Esc or Primary+Q.

Which mode should I choose?

Your goal	Recommended mode	Why
Move, scroll, click, or drag directly	Normal	Best for everyday control.
Reach a screen area quickly	Grid	Does not rely on application accessibility information.
Precisely target a small button or icon	Recursive Grid	Keeps subdividing the current area.
Find a button, link, menu, or input	UI Hint	Labels controls from the accessibility tree or visual recognition.
Arrange windows, group tabs, or restore a workspace	Window	Move one window or build a reusable layout.

Idle: quiet waiting

Idle is the startup state. It listens only for entries in [hotkeys] and does not intercept normal typing. The usual entry is Primary+E: Command+E on macOS and Alt+E on Windows unless you override the Primary alias.

You can start any Mode directly from Idle:

[hotkeys]
"primary+e" = "normal"
"primary+g" = "grid"

Keep at least one entry key.

Temporarily use Normal

Grid, Recursive Grid, and UI Hint inherit Normal by default and use Primary as a temporary-mode modifier. Hold it to use Normal's movement, scrolling, and click bindings while keeping the current targeting session; release it to resume targeting.

Full chords are matched first, temporary mode before current mode. If neither matches, activation keys are removed and the same layer order is used. Thus an explicit primary+s precedes bare s, and Grid’s primary+q precedes Normal’s bare q. Set temporary_mode_passthrough_keys = ["q"] to skip the temporary layer for Q. Other modifiers still participate in matching.

[grid]
inherits = ["hotkeys", "normal"]
temporary_mode = "normal"
temporary_mode_keys = ["primary"]

End states

Targeting modes have a finished state and a clicked state:

[grid.lifecycle]
after_finish = "normal"
after_click = "finish"

For either state you can choose:

• keep: preserve the current session.
• restart: begin it again.
• A Mode name: switch to that Mode, such as idle or normal.
• A built-in verb such as left_click: perform it after completion.

The finished state means no label or character remains to select, common in Grid and UI Hint. The clicked state is entered after a pointer click, common in Recursive Grid. By default, Grid and UI Hint return to Normal after finishing or clicking; Recursive Grid keeps its session.

Multiple displays

Grid and Recursive Grid target the display containing the pointer by default. The built-in Screen Selector plugin uses Primary+S to move to another display and can preserve the current Grid or Recursive Grid path.

Important

If a high-integrity Windows application rejects synthetic input, such as Task Manager, KeySteer clears its input state and returns to Idle so that no state is left behind.