Command Line Interface

The Keyboard Switch service app has a CLI which you can use to control it. On Windows, it's not really convenient as GUI apps cannot output anything to the console, but it can be used as well.

The name of the executable is KeyboardSwitch. This article will assume it's installed on Linux in the /opt/keyboard-switch directory. On macOS, it's located in the /Library/Application Support/Keyboard Switch.app/Contents/MacOS directory.

Commands

Running the App

To start Keyboard Switch, simply run it in the terminal:

/opt/keyboard-switch/KeyboardSwitch &

The & makes the service app run in the background. On Windows, the & is not needed as GUI apps always run separately from the terminal.

Keyboard Switch is a single-instance app. If one instance is already running, and you start another one, it will immediately silently exit.

The app will exit immediately if it cannot find the settings file. This file is created when you run the settings app for the first time. This is done so that there's a lower chance that this app will run in an unconfigured state.

Stopping the App

To stop Keyboard Switch, run the following:

/opt/keyboard-switch/KeyboardSwitch --stop

If an instance of Keyboard Switch is running, this command will stop it. If no instance is running, it will do nothing.

Reloading the Settings

To reload the settings of Keyboard Switch, run the following:

/opt/keyboard-switch/KeyboardSwitch --reload-settings

If an instance of Keyboard Switch is running, this command will make it invalidate its current settings and reload them. If no instance is running, it will do nothing.

Checking Whether the App Is Running

To check whether Keyboard Switch is running, run the following:

/opt/keyboard-switch/KeyboardSwitch --check

If an instance of Keyboard Switch is running, this command will output KeyboardSwitch is running. Otherwise, it will output KeyboardSwitch is not running.

Showing a Help Message

To show the help message, run either of the following:

/opt/keyboard-switch/KeyboardSwitch --help
/opt/keyboard-switch/KeyboardSwitch -?

Command Formats

The aforementioned commands can be prefixed with --, -, or /. For example, to stop Keyboard Switch, you can specify stop, -stop, --stop, or /stop.

Exit Codes

The following exit codes are available:

• 0 — The app has exited successfully.

• 1 — An unspecified error has occurred.

• 2 — The app cannot run, because its settings have an incompatible version. The app is backward-compatible with respect to settings versions — it will read the settings created by an older version and modify them to fit the current version. But it's not forward-compatible — version 4.3 will not work if the settings were created or updated by a newer version.

• 3 — stop, reload-settings, or check was specified as the command, but no instance of KeyboardSwitch is running.

• 4 — An invalid command was specified.

• 5 — The settings file was not found.

• 6 — The app doesn't have access to the accessibility API on macOS.