tags: [guix, gemini, publish, index]

title: a keyd service in Guix

It took a really long time to figure this out, but I can finally use keyd in Guix.

I started out with a manually created eyd.conffile and I manually invoked keyd with udoso I could get my default bindings. This also helped to verify some of the pieces worked before I started.

I tend to use small keyboards and so I've gotten used to what might sound like a peculiar mapping. I like the caps lock key to be a super if held down or a tab if pressed. I like the tab key to be an escape key or an alt key. And I like the left shift double as an escape key when tapped. Here's what the keyd.conf would look like for this:

[ids]

*

[main]

capslock=overload(meta, tab)

esc=tilde

leftshift=overload(shift, esc)

tab=overload(alt, esc)

I wanted to define a service to create the etc file for me instead of manually placing such a file.

It took weeks of trial and error and I can't even explain how I got here or even if it's really *correct*. I couldn't understand the documentation I was able to find and when I tried to use AI to generate something, nothing that it generated seemed to do anything. But this is the service that I ended up defining:

cheme

(define keyd-service-type

(service-type

(name 'keyd)

(extensions

(list (service-extension etc-service-type

(lambda (config)

("keyd/keyd.conf"

,(plain-file "keyd.conf" config)))))

(service-extension shepherd-root-service-type

(lambda (config)

(list (shepherd-service

(provision '(keyd))

(documentation "keyd keyboard remapping daemon")

(requirement '(user-processes))

(auto-start? #t)

(start #~(make-forkexec-constructor

(list #$(file-append keyd "/bin/keyd"))

#:log-file "/var/log/keyd.log"))

(stop #~(make-kill-destructor))

(respawn? #f)))))))

(default-value (apply string-append (list

"[ids]" "n"

"*" "nn"

"[main]" "n"

"capslock=overload(meta, tab)" "n"

"esc=tilde" "n"

"leftshift=overload(shift, esc)" "n"

"tab=overload(alt, esc)" "n"

)))

(description "Run keyd keyboard remapping daemon")))

Working backwards, a default config is defined with my personalized settings. A service is defined to make use of the keyd Guix package and to use those default settings.

While reading through the keyd man page I learned there was a special key combo to kill keyd in case the config was so bad the system wasn't usable. With that in mind I decided the service should NOT respawn if the daemon were to exit.

cheme

(use-service-modules admin)

(use-package-modules linux)

I can't remember what the errors were that came up without them.

To make use of this service, I needed to add it to the services list. Originally, this list looked like this:

cheme

(services %desktop-services)

So I added the new one thusly:

cheme

(services

(cons*

(service keyd-service-type)

%desktop-services))

Of keyd? I think that's obvious, better mappings! Of Guix? I really like the GNU philosophy -- despite that I don't care too much for many of the tools -- and I really like determinant, reproducible systems. So I'm a step closer to understanding a new ecosystem. A painfully slow and meager step, but a step none-the-less.

Tags: index, guix

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created: 2026-05-09

(re)generated: 2026-07-17