Software Alternatives & Reviews

Polychromatic VS Karabiner

Compare Polychromatic VS Karabiner and see what are their differences

Polychromatic logo Polychromatic

Graphical front end and tray applet for configuring Razer peripherals on GNU/Linux.

Karabiner logo Karabiner

Karabiner, previously called KeyRemap4MacBook, is a very powerful keyboard remapper for Mac OS X.
  • Polychromatic Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-14
  • Karabiner Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-06

Polychromatic videos

Polychromatic Review | Show and Tell | Polychromatic Gameplay

More videos:

  • Review - Polychromatic Review
  • Review - Polychromatic Xbox One Review

Karabiner videos

REVIEW: Should you play the Vetterli 71 Karabiner? [Hunt Gun Review #1]

More videos:

  • Review - Vim screencast #59: Karabiner Elements
  • Review - Evolution of the Karabiner 98k, From Prewar to Kriegsmodell

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Polychromatic and Karabiner)
Gaming
100 100%
0% 0
Automation
6 6%
94% 94
Note Taking
15 15%
85% 85
Window Manager
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Polychromatic and Karabiner. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Karabiner seems to be a lot more popular than Polychromatic. While we know about 269 links to Karabiner, we've tracked only 4 mentions of Polychromatic. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Polychromatic mentions (4)

  • Hardware Brand
    I've tried multiple different brands of keyboards and mice and all of them worked well with Linux, often even if Linux wasn't advertised on the box (I wouldn't bet on that though). More well known brands have better support e.g. Razer has OpenRazer and Polychromatic. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Razer blackwidow keyboard backlights
    I re-installed open-razer on Ubuntu and also installed Polychromatic. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Work towards a standard appindicator protocol has started (with support from GNOME and KDE)
    Some apps are still using appindicator like Polychromatic (https://github.com/polychromatic/polychromatic) and it's a buggy mess. I hope this time they make something good and not something totally crap that is going to be a problem for the next few years that a new crew will have to fix. Source: over 2 years ago
  • DeathAdder Essential mouse: how to program buttons on Linux?
    I installed OpenRazer driver and Polychromatic. Also I see this maybe related issue. Source: over 2 years ago

Karabiner mentions (269)

  • Ask HN: What if we wrote HTML with [brackets][/brackets]?
    I have been using Karabiner elements (https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org), they allow keyboard customization, I have switched the colon and semicolon key, by default without pressing shift, the key will output colon (:) , I find this useful as I type lot of colon daily. Maybe you can use this software to set "<" and ">" to be the default text output without using Shift. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Remote desktop from Windows to Mac, native keys and function
    In the settings of chrome remote desktop there is an option to not send modifier keys etc to the host system. I've also heard of https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/. Source: 6 months ago
  • DOS_deck: Play DOS games in the browser with full controller support
    Possible karbiner but I've never looked into doing specifically that, so I may be wrong https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Always paste without formatting on macOS
    Remap with Karabiner (https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/). I personally mapped right_command + v to it, but it's capable of a straight out remap. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • A collection of useful Mac Apps
    Karabiner-Elements - Price: Free Powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS. Source: 10 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Polychromatic and Karabiner, you can also consider the following products

OpenRazer - An entirely open source driver and user-space daemon that allows you to manage your Razer peripherals on GNU/Linux.

SharpKeys - SharpKeys is a utility that manages a Registry key that allows Windows to remap one key to any...

Razer Synapse - Razer Synapse is unified configuration software that allows users to rebind controls or assign...

SteerMouse - Advanced driver for USB and Bluetooth mouses.

ckb-next - ckb-next is an open-source driver for Corsair keyboards and mice.

BTT Remote - A remote control for you Mac, using your iPhone or iPad