the hyper key

Brian Hicks, December 2, 2020

Have you ever noticed that no app binds a default keyboard shortcut to shift+control+option+command+whatever? That means you have a potential global keybinding prefix that will never have any conflicts! Brett Terpstra calls this the hyper key. I like that!

Since this is hard to hit (which, well, that's why nobody uses it by default) I have this bound to a special key on my Kinesis, but I find it acceptable to use on my normal laptop QWERTY keyboard too. Here are some goodies I get:

• hyper + arrow: move a window to the top/right/bottom/left half of my screen with Divvy
• hyper + space: open Things' quick input
• hyper + semicolon: open Things' quick input with autofill
• hyper + j: open the link for my next meeting with Next Meeting
• hyper + enter: jump to Dash
• hyper + ': jump to iTerm2

There are a few more I have bound (fullscreen, middle-of-screen shortcuts) but those are the main ones. I've found them really handy over the years. Let me know if you have any really good ones for yourself!