Omarchy ships with 227 keybindings. You need five of them to survive the first hour, about thirty to stop reaching for the mouse, and one to teach you all the rest.
That last one is Super + K. It opens the full, searchable keybindings list on your own machine. Everything below is a structured way to work through it — six levels, each with a drill, each with a clear “you’ve passed” line. Do them in order. Don’t skip to level 6 because you used i3 in college.
A note on Super: it’s the Windows key on a PC keyboard, Command on a Mac one. In Omarchy it is the hub. Almost nothing important happens without it.
Level 1: Survive
Five keys. That’s the whole level. If you learn nothing else, you can still use the machine.
Super + Space— the Omarchy menu. Launcher, settings, and app installer in one place.Super + Return— terminal.Super + W— close the focused window.Super + K— the keybindings list. Your map.Super + Escape— system menu (lock, restart, shut down).
Notice what’s missing: there’s no dock, no desktop icons, no Start menu to click. Super + Space is the dock. New windows tile themselves automatically — you don’t place them, and that’s the part that feels wrong for about two days and then feels correct forever.
Drill — “The Cold Open.” Log in and, without touching the mouse once, open a terminal, open your browser, and close both. Do it ten times. It should get boring. Boring is the goal — these five need to be reflex before anything else sticks.
You’ve passed when: you can go from login to a working terminal without looking at your hands.
Level 2: Rooms, not windows
This is the level that changes how you think, so don’t rush it. Omarchy gives you ten workspaces. Stop treating them as overflow space and start treating them as rooms with jobs.
Super + 1throughSuper + 9, andSuper + 0— jump to that workspace.Super + Shift + 1…0— throw the current window to that workspace and follow it there.Super + Shift + Alt + 1…0— send it there silently. You stay put. This is the one people miss, and it’s the best binding in the set.Super + Tab/Super + Shift + Tab— next / previous workspace.Super + Ctrl + Tab— the workspace you were just on. The alt-tab of rooms.
The silent move is worth dwelling on. A long build starts, a video begins encoding, a download kicks off — Super + Shift + Alt + 4 and it’s gone to room 4 without your focus ever leaving what you’re doing. No minimizing. No hunting for it in a taskbar later. It’s in room 4, because you put it there.
Drill — “Assign the Rooms.” Give each workspace a permanent job and write it on a sticky note for a week. A reasonable starting map: 1 terminal, 2 browser, 3 editor, 4 background jobs, 5 chat and email. Then work a full day where every app opens in its assigned room, no exceptions. When something lands in the wrong room, don’t drag it — silently move it.
You’ve passed when: you stop asking “where did that window go?” because the answer is always the room number you assigned it.
Level 3: Move the focus, not the pointer
Now you’re navigating inside a room. The mental shift here: you are not selecting a window, you’re moving a direction.
Super + ←↑↓→— move focus to the window in that direction.Super + Shift + ←↑↓→— swap the window itself in that direction.Alt + Tab/Shift + Alt + Tab— next / previous window.Super + F— fullscreen.Super + Alt + F— full width, which keeps the tiling and is what you usually actually wanted.Super + T— toggle floating vs. tiled.Super + J— toggle the split direction, so the next window opens beside instead of below.Ctrl + Alt + Tab— jump to the next monitor, if you have two.
Super + J confuses everyone at first. Tiling window managers decide whether a new window splits the space horizontally or vertically. Super + J flips that decision before you open the next window. Press it, then open something, and watch where it lands. That’s it.
Drill — “The Four Corners.” Open four terminals in one workspace so you have a 2×2 grid. Now, using only Super and arrows, visit them in a clockwise loop. Ten laps. Then ten counter-clockwise. Then use Super + Shift and arrows to rotate all four windows one position clockwise, and put them back.
You’ve passed when: your hand stops drifting toward the mouse when you want the window on the right.
Level 4: Shape the space
Resizing is where most people quietly give up and grab the mouse. The bindings look intimidating written down and take about ten minutes in practice, because there’s a pattern: Minus and Equal are your two size keys, and the modifier controls how big a step you take.
Super + Minus/Super + Equal— expand / shrink horizontally.Super + Shift + Minus/Super + Shift + Equal— the vertical pair.- Add
Altfor a small nudge, addCtrlfor a big jump. SoSuper + Ctrl + Minusis a large horizontal expand, andSuper + Alt + Minusis a fine one. Super + Alt + Home— save the current window width so it opens that way next time.
Then the three stash-and-stack tools that make small screens workable:
Super + S— toggle the scratchpad, a window that floats above everything and hides on command.Super + Alt + Ssends the current window into it. Perfect for a music player, a chat window, or a scratch terminal.Super + G— group windows into one tabbed container.Super + Ctrl + ←/→moves between tabs in the group.Super + O— pop a window out: float it and pin it so it survives a workspace switch. This is your video call during a workday.
Drill — “Build the Cockpit.” From an empty workspace, build this with no mouse: editor taking two-thirds on the left, two stacked terminals on the right, a music player in the scratchpad, and a pinned notes window floating in the corner. Tear it down and rebuild it three times. Time yourself on the third.
You’ve passed when: you can build your working layout in under twenty seconds from empty.
Level 5: The system layer
Everything so far was windows. This level is the machine itself — the stuff you’d normally hunt through menus and system trays for.
Super + C/Super + V/Super + X— universal copy, paste, cut. These work the same in the terminal and in GUI apps, which quietly removes the single most annoying thing about Linux.Super + Ctrl + V— clipboard history.Super + Ctrl + E— emoji picker.Print— screenshot.Alt + Print— screen recording.Super + Print— color picker.Super + ,— dismiss the last notification.Super + Alt + ,opens it instead,Super + Shift + ,clears all of them,Super + Shift + Alt + ,is the history, andSuper + Ctrl + ,silences everything.Super + Ctrl + L— lock.Super + Ctrl + N— night light.Super + Ctrl + I— stop it locking while idle, for presentations.Super + Backspace— toggle window transparency.Super + Shift + Ctrl + Space— theme menu.- Your laptop’s media and brightness keys work bare. Hold
Altwith volume or brightness for fine-grained steps, orShiftto jump straight to minimum or maximum.
The notification comma-cluster deserves the ten minutes. Notifications are the number one reason people’s hands go back to the mouse — something pops up, you click it away, and now you’re holding the mouse again for the next four minutes.
Drill — “The No-Look Day.” For one working day, handle every notification with the comma bindings, take every screenshot with Print, and paste from history with Super + Ctrl + V at least ten times. Change your theme twice, just to prove you can.
You’ve passed when: a notification appears and your hand doesn’t move.
Level 6: Unplug the mouse
Here’s the honest part. Levels 1 through 5 make the desktop mouseless — and Omarchy hands you that almost for free, because the whole system was designed by someone who works this way. Level 6 is harder, because the remaining mouse dependency isn’t in the window manager. It’s inside your apps.
Two bindings tell you exactly where the seam is: Super + Left Mouse moves a window and Super + Right Mouse resizes it. Those are the only two mouse bindings in the entire default set. Omarchy already went mouseless; you’re the one catching up.
The browser is the real boss fight. It’s where most people spend most of the day, and it’s a giant field of click targets. Learn your browser’s native keyboard set first — focus the address bar, cycle tabs, jump back and forward, and use in-page find as a navigation tool rather than a search tool: hit find, type a couple of letters of the link you want, press Enter. That one habit removes a surprising share of your clicks. If you want to go further, a keyboard-navigation extension in the Vimium family will put a letter label on every link so you can “click” by typing.
Prefer apps that already have keyboards. Omarchy ships Neovim, a terminal-first stack, and a set of tools chosen by someone who doesn’t want to click either. Every task you move from a GUI to a terminal tool is a task that’s permanently mouseless. Email, git, file management, and system monitoring all have excellent terminal answers already installed.
Then make the bindings yours. Anything you do daily that still takes three keystrokes should take one. User bindings live in ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua:
o.bind("SUPER + SHIFT + R", "SSH", "alacritty -e ssh your-server")
o.bind("SUPER + M", "Music", { launch = "spotify" })Hyprland reloads on save. One warning: if the key you want is already taken, you have to hl.unbind("SUPER + F") before rebinding it, or your new binding silently loses. Check first with Super + K.
Drill — “Unplug It.” Literally. Unplug the mouse, put it in a drawer, and work a full day. On a laptop, XF86TouchpadToggle — usually a function key — disables the touchpad so you can’t cheat. Keep a text file open and write down every single moment you reached for it and couldn’t. That list is your homework: each line is either a binding you haven’t learned, a browser habit you haven’t built, or an app that genuinely needs a pointer.
Do it again a week later. The list should be a third as long.
You’ve passed when: the list fits on one line.
What stays mouse-bound, honestly
Some things are pointing tasks and always will be. Image and video editing, design tools, anything on a canvas, maps, drag-and-drop file operations across two file manager windows, and a handful of web apps built with no keyboard support at all. Chasing 100% is a hobby, not a productivity strategy.
The realistic target is this: the mouse becomes a tool you pick up deliberately for a specific job, like a stylus, instead of the default way you talk to your computer. That’s achievable in about two weeks of the drills above, and it’s most of the benefit.
The thirty-key core
If you only commit one block to memory, make it this: Super + Space, Return, W, K, Escape to survive. Super + 1–0 and Super + Shift + 1–0 for rooms, plus Super + Shift + Alt + number to send something away silently. Super + arrows to move focus and Super + Shift + arrows to move windows. Super + F, Super + Alt + F, Super + T for shape. Super + Minus and Super + Equal to resize. Super + S for the scratchpad. Super + C/V/X and Super + Ctrl + V for the clipboard. Super + , for notifications.
That’s roughly thirty bindings and it covers a normal working day. The other 197 are there when you want them, and Super + K will always show you the list.
Bindings here were checked against a live Omarchy 4.0.1 install. Defaults do shift between releases, so if something doesn’t match, trust Super + K on your own machine over any blog post — including this one. You can also dump the whole list as text with omarchy menu keybindings --print.
More on the OS itself: Omarchy Isn’t an AI OS. It’s DHH’s Opinionated Linux Desktop. Official docs: The Omarchy Manual, and Coming From Mac or Windows if your fingers still expect Command-Tab.
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