Foot Pedals for Coders… Is That a Thing?
I’ve had some RSI issues over the past year and I’m always looking to take stress away from my hands and offload some of that work away from the keyboard. So far, I’ve found that you can use Siri (when it works), an Apple Pencil (also when it works), and recently I found you could use foot pedals.
I used to be a long-time user of the Kinesis Freestyle Blue for Mac. I still love that keyboard and think it’s a great keyboard, but recently I’ve found myself more comfortable on a Kinesis Advantage 2 which I use daily at home and at work. When I went to Gophercon 2016, I met a couple of folks who swore by the Kinesis Advantage 2 and pairing it with the foot pedals made by Kinesis. I had always remembered that story, but never did anything about it until now.
Savant Elite 2
I’m using the Savant Elite 2 that has three foot pedals. My very first impression was that the foot pedal was loud and required more force to press than I was originally imagining. Let me clarify that by saying, it’s not difficult to press by any means, I just imagined it to be as easy as a keyboard key.
The way the foot pedal works is by mapping any single key or combination of keys to the foot pedal. You can even map your mouse click actions to it. You don’t like double-clicking on your mouse? No problem, you can map that action to the foot pedal.
Macros
Where the foot pedal really shines is with macros — you can map a combination of keys to any pedal. I’ve tried a few different setups on my triple pedal setup. For example, at one point I mapped the action ⌥ ⇧ → delete to delete one word forward and a similar macro to delete one word backward. That was fun for a while and if that’s an action you do often, the foot pedals handle it gracefully.
Since I already have a Kinesis Advantage 2 that I can add macros on, I ended up removing those macros and programmed ⌘ V to one pedal to paste from my clipboard. This has been really nice because sometimes I’ll copy something from my iPhone, and due to Apple’s Handoff technology, I can then use a foot pedal to paste that item on my Mac.
Programming
Programming the foot pedals are pretty straight forward once you get used to the syntax in the .txt files. And if you ever need help, I’ve found Kinesis’ customer support, tech@kinesis.com, to be super friendly and responsive in helping you with a macro.
To program the pedal, there’s a switch on the bottom that switches it from Play mode to Program mode. It basically mounts a drive where you have access to edit a .txt file.
For example, if you want to map the left pedal to ⌘ V , this is the syntax you would use:
{lpedal}>{-lwin}{v}{+lwin}
You use the {} for macros and [] for single keys. Above I’m mapping the left pedal to press down on the left windows key denoted by the — , followed by pressing the v key, then lifting the left windows key denoted by the +. (Note: the left windows key is my ⌘ key since the Kinesis Advantage 2 does not have Mac names in their text files.)
If you wanted to map the right pedal to a left mouse click, you would use:
[rpedal]>[lmouse]
Notice the [] are used here since the mapping is one pedal click to one button click instead of multiple button presses like in a macro.
Single Key
I tried replacing a commonly used key from my keyboard to the Savant Elite 2 like spacebar or backspace, but I personally did not like this setup. I found it was too much time wasted since my muscle memory as a fast touch typist would go to the traditional spacebar or backspace on my keyboard. However, this may be something that works for you.
Mouse Clicks
The pedal is advertised as being able to do mouse clicks. Initially, I thought that this would be kind of silly. But after using it for just a single day, I found myself really liking this setup. I know what you’re thinking, can you really not click a mouse? I can, but it’s just so much more fun to do it on a foot pedal! It’s really nice to be able to just use my thumb on my mouse to navigate my pointer (I use an MX Ergo trackball), and then use my foot for a mouse click. I use this for all my left mouse clicks including holding it down to drag a selection. There are no issues.
Since the middle pedal is a bit in an awkward position for me, I programmed it to something I don’t do as often, mouse right click. This has been working for me for a few months, but I may change the middle pedal to something else if I can find something more useful.
Build Quality
The build quality is outstanding. The pedals feel rock solid and I have not had any issues whatsoever.
Limitations
I did get this foot pedal instead of the single foot pedal that works with the Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard. If you plan to map complex actions with the Advantage 2 keyboard and the pedal, you’re better off getting the pedal that integrates with the keyboard.
Also, my own experience has shown you don’t want to map a key that you press frequently like spacebar. Over time your foot probably won’t like that very much 🤣.
The middle foot pedal to be honest is a bit awkward for me to reach. I find
myself using it the least because of that. If I were to repurchase a pedal, I’d probably just buy a dual pedal.
Conclusion
I can’t say that using the foot pedals have helped my RSI, but I can say that they have been a fun experiment to play with. I really enjoy using two of the pedals while editing videos for Pluralsight as well as my daily work as a developer. When I’m working somewhere else and don’t have my foot pedals, I often find myself reaching for them.
