As someone who hates noisy keys, this is really cool. It lets people who like hearing audible click feedback to still hear it their headphones, while other folks around them don't hear it all. Nice job.
Still worse. Mechanical keys make the sound/tactile bump at the point of actuation. There is significant latency between that and your eyeballs, about as much between that and your ears (USB keyboard HID is typically polled at 10ms, Bluetooth is easily over 50ms).
I've tried things like this, and they lag is very slight and variable, but is too noticeable for me to enjoy. There's nothing better than pure mechanical soundwaves
Missing the point I think. It's really disrespectful to use a loud / mechanical keyboard in a public place, or really when anyone else is nearby. This lets folks use normal/good keyboards and still satisfy the weird craving some have for mechanical noises through their own headphones. Probably will save some RSI surgeries too, people can use healthy low key travel keyboards instead of high travel mechanical switches, while still getting the clicking sound they want.
> Probably will save some RSI surgeries too, people can use healthy low key travel keyboards instead of high travel mechanical switches, while still getting the clicking sound they want.
Citation Needed.
Mechanical keyboards are generally considered to be /better/ for your ergonomic health than low-travel keyboards. Part of this is that the primary form of repetitive injury is bottoming out the keys, which if you are on a higher travel keyboard with good tactile feedback you tend not to do, because you can actuate the keys without bottoming out.
It seems individual. For me mechanical keyboards are way too deep and require too much effort to press. It is possible to lightly touch them but this requires more mental effort imo than just using a chiclet keyboard.
It feels like people use them for the satisfying audio and tactile feedback rather than any genuine improvement in typing speed.
> It is possible to lightly touch them but this requires more mental effort imo than just using a chiclet keyboard.
This is easily remedied by using a very lightweight switch. Many different mechanical switches are available from well under 45gf to actuation force. (Thinkpad and macbook laptop/desktop keyboard range from 60 to 65gf of actuation[1]) You can see a small set of available switches and their force actuation curves here: switches.mx. You should possibly look into getting a switch tester with many types of switches to get the exact feedback force you prefer.
There’s a ton more websites (theremingoat.com) and public github databases for this data.
Anecdote: I had serious wrist/hand pain after using a mechanical keyboard for years. I changed to a low profile keyboard, and I don't have pain anymore. Who knows, maybe it was coincidence.
Anecdote: I had the opposite, I switched to an ergo layout mechanical keyboard and a vertical mouse and was able to avoid near-certain surgery.
The difference tends to be whether you're a "hard typer" or not. Folks who are hard typers (I am one), do much better with mechanical keyboards because it subtlety teaches you not to bottom out due to tactile feedback, while low-travel keyboards you /always/ bottom out while using. Folks who are not hard typers don't bottom out hard enough for it to injure them, and because they type more softly experience more strain due to the higher actuation weights of mechanical key switches.
RSI is fun like that, there's no one true answer. You have to find what works for you. It's not a mistake though that one of the first and most respected ergonomic keyboards has always been mechanical, though [1].
That said, /most/ RSI issues actually start with how you sit while typing. If you get a proper chair and desk and adjust your typing stance (yes, this is a thing), you can reduce wrist pain from RSI even without changing anything about your keyboard. Also, using touchscreens and using mice are way worse than the keyboard for you anyway.
The reason I responded the way I did to the parent, is that people who are hard typers are basically guaranteed to end up with RSI at some point in their life simply due to the strain of being a hard typer. As near as I can gather at this point, there's nothing you can do to train yourself to not be a hard typer. I'll be this way my entire life, but I can get tools that reduce its negative impacts.
Funny, I always feel like I’m about to get injured using really low travel keyboards like the new apple magic keyboards. Hence I prefer mechanical ones.
Guess it varies from person to person. Good to find what works for you.
I have a theory that the RSI is mainly developed by the angle of the hands relative to the keyboard. Which is why the profile change is sufficient to mitigate the problem.
Good point - using a wrist rest with a mechanical keyboard feels a lot more comfortable for me, since they tend to be a bit bulkier and more raised from the desk. Without one, I rely on the armrests to have the forearms higher than the keyboard so that my wrists aren't flexed.
‘Mechanical’ has practically nothing to do with keyboard acoustics. Take a typical mechanical keyswitch, like a Cherry MX brown, loose on it own, and press it: it's practically silent.
Obviously it doesn't change anything in the physical world. I think you're just misunderstanding the implication. If this software fulfills the need, individuals would not need to use keyboards that physically create the sound. Whether that would actually happen is a different matter.
This whole comment feels pretty bunk and I am surprised at the confidence with which it is written.
> It's really disrespectful to use a loud / mechanical keyboard in a public place, or really when anyone else is nearby.
It isn't. Public places come with noise. By this snippet, even speaking would be disrespectful in a public place.
> This lets folks use normal/good keyboards and still satisfy the weird craving some have for mechanical noises through their own headphones.
Good keyboards are subjective. It is weirdly reductive to refer to keyboard sounds as a craving.
> Probably will save some RSI surgeries too, people can use healthy low key travel keyboards instead of high travel mechanical switches, while still getting the clicking sound they want.
Low travel keyboards are not healthy. Regular keyboards are not unhealthy. There are not correlations between them. The nature of RSI means that experiences will differ and what works or doesn't work for you will not be the same for me.
Of course public spaces come with noise, but creating more noise than you need to is disrespectful. It's no different to having bad hygiene, using more space than you need or public flatulence. These things are unpleasant or inconvenient for others so should be kept to a minimum. In general one should seek to minimise their footprint wherever possible.
The spoken word is probably the single most difficult common specific sound to filter out - it's probably the sound we're most hardwired to pick out from background noise and process, possibly second to the sounds of an aggressive wild animal.
Audible conversation is incredibly distracting - we put up with it in the workplace because workers need to collaborate and communicate. There's a reason it's heavily frowned upon in places where people intend to hear something specific (theatres, churches) or focus deeply (libraries).
Your Cherry MX Blue switches probably aren't going to be welcome in any of those spaces either though.
It’s mainly useful in an open office setting and you want to be able to hear click feedback but don’t want to drive everyone around you crazy with a noisy keyboard. Or you’re working on a laptop and want more audible key feedback than the laptop keyboard provides.
This is a neat little piece of software, however I find the most satisfaction comes from building your own mechanical keyboard that makes amazing sounds when you type :). I recommend it as a good weekend project for pretty much any nerdy-type person.
Atari ST's TOS also did it via the sound chip. Could be turned off in Control Panel.
IBM's "beam spring"-switch terminal keyboards had a solenoid, to make it sound like a typewriter: <https://youtu.be/tMOkhsHxA7U> (with modern controller)
There was something recently about hacks using actual sounds from a keyboard (which is an old thing) but someone commented that they had trained an AI in 30 minutes or so that had about 90% accuracy -- I think someone used this technique to hack a phone scam group too, just from listening to them typing over the phone as the scammer targeted them. Hot!
> they had trained an AI in 30 minutes or so that had about 90% accuracy
IF we're talking about the same article, the AI was trained from sounds recorded from a single phone, placed always in the same spot near a single computer that was being used by a single person.
My guess is that it can't generalize OR that for it to be a viable attack, you have to target a specific person and access a microphone always placed in the same spot near the target comuputer
I bought it through the App Store and it requires you to give the app Accessibility access. I hesitated about this, but it does make sense. The good news is that you can turn this setting on and off easily. So potentially you could only run the app with access to keyboard input when you're choosing to write something that's not sensitive.
I'm boggled by this - assuming it's not a joke of some kind. Would anybody actually pay to have a clacky key sound if their keyboard doesn't do it already?
I do the bulk of my typing on ancient Microsoft Natural Pro keyboards from the pre-/early 2000s era. (Though I'm trialing the Cloud Nine ergo split keyboards with some success...) Noise is inevitable. Not sure I'd pay for it if it didn't happen, er, naturally though.
I still firmly believe that a microtransaction economy would be great for exactly this kind of use-cases to transform currently broken/predatory business models into viable, affordable services. Using the Lightning Network for such transactions seems obvious to me, though I know the general hatred of HN for Bitcoin and crypto (the latter of which I agree with).
This reminds me of getting into the zone and programming away on a mechanical keyboard. The sound is really soothing for me and feels so good. Unfortunately, as I age it’s harder and harder to get into this perfect flow, where every key stroke touches my soul.
I don't know about this. For me 99% of the satisfaction of a mechanical keyboard comes from the tactile feedback rather than the sound. In fact the first thing I do on any new device with a touchscreen is turn off the annoying keyboard click sound.
Idk who this is for. Unless you really like mechanical keyboards but can't use them either due to other coworkers or a lack of funds, but something like this would make me kinda sad as someone who actually likes mechanical keyboards.
This seems like an app that people who don't like mechanical keyboards wish that people who do like keyboards would use. But that's a laughable sentiment because it fundamentally misunderstands why people use mechanical keyboards.
The apple keyboard is shit, and the lack of sound wasn't the problem. If people in your life use a loud keyboard ask them to get a mechanical keyboard with silent switches, you can make them sound quieter than a laptop.
Unfortunately has a significant delay over bluetooth; I was somewhat hopeful I could get the gratifying clacking sound along with quiet, tactile switches without annoying people, but being so out of sync makes it fairly awful to use.
It might be okay with wired headphones, but that's not what I've got.
It seems to vary. Even very nice phones seem to lag depending on the device you're playing from. I'm using a Mac Studio that's fairly well specced and Sony WF-100XM4s which are good earbuds, but maybe the Studio has a relatively bad bluetooth chipset? I'm not sure. Oddly enough I get excellent latency with these from a Nintendo Switch. It's hard to tell what makes it work well or not.
Yeah, what is it with the switch? My WF-XM1004s are the same when playing switch, yet not on other devices. Maybe it has a better radio? That would surprise me a bit, but who knows.
There are some "demos" on the homepage, although I don't think they do a very good job of demonstrating the app.
Klack is an interesting concept, but a really wish there was like a 15 minute real demo or something to really get a feel for what's like. I'm also reluctant of paying for it just to try it out.
You’re misunderstanding. There’s been frustration amongst macOS power users about the proliferation of Electron apps which are worse than native apps in every regard, from performance to user interface. Native apps are no longer the norm, but there are many people who fervently prefer them and avoid Electron apps at all costs, so developers using native technologies have started making it clear from the start how their apps are built.
It does! With significantly more prominence than the “Built exclusively for your Mac”, which is the last thing on the page in a small font with low contrast.
In the features list it says “Blazing fast native app” with “native app” encircled in an animated effect with an attention-grabbing colour. One of the only two places where the page uses purple. The animation even refreshes every time you scroll to it.
I cringe when I see statements like that. Replace $OS with anything else and you should be able to see what I mean. This wasn't built exclusively for anything, it's a monetized side project, and this submission is an advert.
I have no affiliation with the app nor had I even heard of it minutes before submitting. I didn’t even notice it was paid (that’s only visible after you click to download and get redirected to the Mac App Store). I submitted it because it seemed like something fun that some people would enjoy, and I liked the website itself.
One of the first programs I tried on my old MacPlus was called "Selectric". You ran it, and it immediately exited, without anything happening. But, the next type you typed a character in any other program, you got a nice, satisfying "chunk"; the spacebar went "di-git", and the return key went "zzzzzzip." Very entertaining at the time.
Are you sure about that? IIRC, all Model M keyboards say "1984" on them, but that's a copyright date, not the manufacturing date. There should be another inscription somewhere with the actual manufacturing date (day/month/year, not just year).
In iOS Safari, I had them playing under my music, barely noticed, they are quite faint.
Then when I switched away to pause Pandora and get a better listen, they seemed to go silent too. But, when I reloaded the Klack site, they seemed to work again. FWIW.
I tried it, wouldn't really recommend if you are using laptop speaker (like to be used in private space / at home). I'm not sure how well it will work cable earphones.
My main issue with it is the sound direction. I'm using MBP 16 and it feels like the sound is coming from in front of me (like coming out of the screen) rather than from below around the keyboard area. It's just not comfortable.
It also lack on the bass sounds so feel very high pitched. Or maybe the sound not matching the physical feeling. Maybe could work better if you already using (silent) mechanical keyboard.
Several years ago, I purchased a Unicomp keyboard to address ongoing wrist discomfort. While it effectively alleviated the pain, it introduced another issue that was far more disruptive: the noise level of the keyboard made it difficult for my colleagues to focus when sharing an office with me.
The noise generated by mechanical keyboards is an issue that requires a solution, unless you happen to be working solo from home.
There are solutions, 'silent' mechanical keyboards have been around for ages and they are very good. You can buy the switches on their own[0] or buy a keyboard that comes 'silent' out of the box[1]
What's the state of low latency audio these days? If this has any more than 8ms of lag it would be noticeable. Last time I cared about it (for music production) you had to use special drivers on Windows (ASIO) or a real time kernel for Linux (I think the latter may have been mainlined?)
What will happen when you combine this with AutoHotKey and the like? Will my coworkers think I'm producing tons of code or will it remain silent?
I used wev (Wayland xev) and some macros on Sway in past to use my touchpad with macros (macOS-like) but I guess these are going to count as keypresses.
A perfect app to embed a keylogger into if there ever was one.
You could even do this in a plausibly-deniable way, if you sent the timestamps of every pressed key without sending the actual keys, for example, you could do some analysis on those patterns.
This app needs accessibility access in MacOS. The OS warns ominously: "Allow the applications below to control your computer". Did I just pay to install a keylogger?
90%+ of Mac software I have installed in newer versions needs some broad "accessibility" permission, simply because the OS is too restrictive for an application that wants to do anything even slightly complex. 1Password needs it to autofill text inputs. Zoom needs it for screenshare. iTerm needs it for remapping keys. The OS presents it as "this scary app wants to control your computer!!" when the permission should really be broken down.
Well of course it has to register the keystrokes first. And only when it knows which key you struck can it produce that Dolby Surround spatially consistent clack.
I can't assure you you haven't, since the only way to tell would be via the source code, but for what its worth, I've installed a lot of other applications that ask for permission to "control your computer", including "Discord, League of Legends, Steam, Zoom, Logitech Options, etc.
In 1988, Macs gave you tue ability to map sounds to keystrokes. (I think I was using a Mac II.) So, I mapped a recording of my own keys. It created a nice sort of reverb for me and annoyed my officemates.
I want this but instead of my CPU usage goes over a certain percentage I get that early 2010s MacBook Pro sound: like it’s a jet trying to take off from my desk.
I bought Klack and enjoying it so far. Wish there were more switches though. My concern is how do I know this is not a keylogger that I just knowingly paid to install into my system? :-)
What a strange comment. Don’t buy if you don’t want it. Develop a free alternative if you are passionate about it.
But just complaining like this? Is it considered dirty to sell something now? At least it’s not a subscription.
I am not saying that this is low effort either, the website itself probably took some time. I am saying that a lot of this effort is pointless.
To be clear, not because the developer is bad (I did not try it outside of the website demo), but because of the state of software development imposing pointless complexity.
How hard do you believe it should be to play a sound on keystroke?
The devil is in the details.
So I am a bit careful making a statement here without trying to implement it myself first. Could be super simple, but maybe not.
For an open source alternative, try Bucklyspring: it runs on linux, mac and windows. All Klack's marketing lingo even applies as well: High fidelity sound, Immersive spatial audio, Instant type feedback, Up/down keystrokes.
Thanks for sharing this project. Love the sounds [1]. Unfortunately, the github states the windows version is broken (haven't verified myself). Also, just personal taste, I can see myself getting tied of the bucklespring sound. Klack having different switch sounds seems worth the price alone.
The erlang version will allow it to be played through the speakers of any or all devices in the cluster. I'm not sure we're ready for this amount of power.
The term is, the tech isn't. Apple does this with lots of things, like calling OLED displays 'Super Retina'; it both is and isn't true that only Apple products have super retina displays.
I think the distinguishing feature of displays branded “Super Retina” is the high pixel density (around 460 ppi). They have lower density OLED displays that they just call “Retina”.
That the term essentially didn't exist (1/100 "interest") until Apple rolled it out in Sep 2020 (with some press the summer before).
The general idea of a 3D effect on headphones has been around for decades, often called "3D audio" or similar [1], but I never heard the term "spatial audio" until Apple marketed it.
