jadegeek/fluor

A handy tool for macOS allowing you to switch Fn keys' mode based on active application.

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What is Fluor ?

Fluor is a tool that allows you to automatically change the behavior of the keyboard's fn keys depending on the active application. It's that simple.

Instaling Fluor

There's two main ways to install Fluor:

1. Download the latest release, open the DMG and drag the application to your /Applications folder.
2. Install via Homebrew Cask:
   $ brew cask install fluor

You can also build it from source, but this is not recommended if your are only going to use Fluor in the regular way, and not hack it.

How does it work?

Fluor lies in your status bar and makes you see instantaneously which mode your keyboard is on:

• means that the keyboard's fn keys act like the default Apple function keys.
• means that the keyboard's fn keys act like these good old function keys (F1, F2, F3, you got it...).

Fluor's menu

This is what you get when you click on Fluor in the status bar:

You can choose the default mode. Whenever Fluor runs it will activate the default mode for your keyboard's fn keys.

Fluor also displays the active application and its associated rule that you can change on the go.
is the default rule and means that the application will adopt default Fluor's keyboard behaviour.

You can also disable Fluor if you need to. It will set the keyboard's behaviour as it was prior to the application's launch.

Rules Editor

This panel allows you to see all the rules you set at once. You can modify or delete any rule. Adding a rule will prompt a file selector in which you'll be able to select the application you want to set a rule for.

Running Applications

Sometimes it is not possible to select an application in the Rules Editor, especially for Steam games. This panel lets you set a rule for any running application. Of course the rules you set in this panel will be available directly in the Rules Editor. You can also remove a rule by setting the application behaviour to , it will also disappear from the Rules Editor panel.

Why is it open source ?

I made Fluor because I needed such an application. I wanted it simple, nicely designed and free and I didn't find such a thing on the internet. Once it was done I used it for a little while, cleaned up the code and decided to give it to others for free. What was a requirement for me can well be a requirement for others too.
You'd argue that such a non-sandboxed app had no chance to hit the AppStore and you'd be right. But if I had the chance it would have remained free and open-source. I don't think there's many people needing such an app and I prefer seeing it used by a wider range of people.

This app is also built using open-source code, that's why I think it belongs to this world. And if someone learns something looking at the code I'll be happy 😃.

Contributing

All contributions are welcome. Fork it, hack it and make a pull request.

License

Fluor is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.

Some of fntoggle's code was used. As its author wrote it could be released under the GPL2 license.

The code also uses LaunchAtLoginController which is Copyright (c) 2010 Ben Clark-Robinson, [email protected] and is released under the MIT LICENSE.