Opening Menus with the Mouse

While Kando does not have a cross-platform way to open menus with a mouse button, there are many platform-dependent third-party tools which can help you with this.

With some creativity, you can open menus not only with mouse buttons but also with gestures, desktop widgets, or in many other ways.

Open Menus from Third-Party Tools

You can either make the third-party tool open the menu by simulation the shortcut for the menu, or it can directly call the Kando executable with the --menu "menu name" argument.

Depending on your operating system, the command to open a Kando menu would look like this:

Windows

%localappdata%\Kando\app-<version number>\Kando.exe --menu "Menu Name"

macOS

/Applications/Kando.app/Contents/MacOS/Kando --menu "Menu Name"

Linux

/usr/bin/kando --menu "Menu Name"

Flatpak

flatpak run menu.kando.Kando --menu "Menu Name"

Simulate the shortcut if possible!

If the third-party tool supports simulating keyboard shortcuts, it is recommended to use this method. Opening a menu by calling the Kando executable will usually be a bit slower than simulating the shortcut.

Third-Party Tools

Below are some applications which can help you to open menus in various ways. Most of them are free and open-source.

Windows

• AutoHotkey is a powerful scripting language for Windows. You can use it to run the kando command when you press a mouse button or to remap a mouse button to a keyboard shortcut which opens a Kando menu.
• GestureSign allows opening a Kando menu with multi-touch taps and gestures on both touchpad and touchscreen.

macOS

• Karabiner-Elements can be used to remap mouse buttons to keyboard shortcuts.
• BetterTouchTool allows opening a Kando menu via touchpad gestures.
• Multitouch allows to add keyboard shortcut as a gesture for trackpad or Apple Magic Mouse.
• BetterMouse is a tool which allows you to remap mouse buttons to keyboard shortcuts.

Linux

• Input Remapper is a tool which allows you to remap mouse buttons to keyboard shortcuts. It works both on X11 and Wayland.
• Touchegg is a multitouch gesture recognizer for Linux. You can use it to open a Kando menu with touchpad gestures. It only works on X11.
• KDE Plasma comes with built-in support for remapping mouse buttons to keyboard shortcuts. You can find this feature in the system settings under “System Settings” / “Mouse & Touchpad” / “Add Binding”.
• There’s a Configurable Button widget for KDE Plasma which allows running kando --menu "menu name" when clicked.
• On GNOME Shell, you can use the CHC-E (Custom Hot Corners - Extended) extension to run arbitrary commands when you move your mouse to a corner of the screen.

Have you discovered another cool tool?

If you discovered a cool new way to open menus, please let us know! You can either open an issue, edit this file, or join the Discord server to discuss your idea!