Neru

Navigate your entire screen without touching the mouse.

Built for the person who already remapped Caps Lock.

Free and open-source. No subscription. No trial. No catch.

macOS	Linux	Windows
Full featured ✅	Basic support 🔵	Basic support 🔵

If you use Vimium in the browser, you already know what this feels like. Neru brings that to your entire operating system — every app, every window, every menu bar item. Navigate with labels, grids, or vim-style keys. Click, right-click, drag, scroll, select text — all without leaving your keyboard.

Here's the whole flow:

Cmd+Shift+Space   →  labels appear on every clickable element
type the label    →  cursor jumps there
Shift+L           →  left click

The mouse is now optional.

Unlike most tools in this space, Neru is CLI-first — every action is a command, every setting is a plain toml file, everything is scriptable. No settings panel. No GUI preferences window. It lives in your dotfiles like it was always supposed to be there.

See it in action — recursive grid mode in real use:

macOS — Homebrew (recommended):

brew tap y3owk1n/tap
brew install --cask y3owk1n/tap/neru

services.neru.enable = true;

git clone https://github.com/y3owk1n/neru.git && cd neru
just build   # or just bundle on macOS
just install

Once you're done with the installation, you can just run the Neru.app (macOS) or the neru launch binary (macOS / Linux / Windows). On Windows you can also start Neru from the Start Menu, which runs the same neru.exe without a console window. Neru will prompt for config initialization and accessibility permission whenever is needed.

Four modes, one tool — mix and match as the situation calls for it.

Recursive Grid · start here

Grid

Hints (AX + Vision OCR)

All bindings are fully remappable — Colemak, Dvorak, whatever you're on. → Configuration Guide

Most tools in this space are GUI apps with a settings panel. Neru is the opposite — the CLI is the interface, and config is a file you own.

neru hints          # trigger hints mode
neru grid           # trigger grid mode
neru recursive_grid # trigger recursive grid mode
neru scroll         # trigger scroll mode
neru config reload  # hot-reload config without restarting
neru status         # check daemon state and permissions

Config lives at ~/.config/neru/config.toml — plain text, version-controllable, and hot-reloadable. Every action is available over IPC, so Neru composes naturally with skhd, Raycast, Alfred, Hammerspoon, or any shell script. If it can run a command, it can drive Neru.

neru config init      # generate a fully-commented starter config
neru config validate  # check for errors before applying
neru config reload    # apply changes without restarting

→ CLI Guide · Configuration Guide · Config Showcases

"neru: the ACTUAL BEST app for ditching mouse"

Watch the author run their entire daily workflow without touching the mouse → HOW-I-USE-NERU.md

Got questions or want to share your setup? Join the Discord →

The community built a browser-based training game to help you get fast with recursive grid and hints. Practice target acquisition, sharpen your reaction time, get reps in before it clicks.

👉 Play Neru Dojo — no install, works in any browser.

More modes, more engines, more platforms — and it's free. If you've been paying for any of the tools above, Neru is worth 10 minutes of your time.

→ Roadmap · Cross-platform details

Everything you need to go deep:

Neru is written in Go and Objective-C with a clean, modular structure — adding a new feature or platform adapter is straightforward. Pull requests are very welcome.

git checkout -b feature/your-feature
just test && just lint
# open a pull request

→ Development Guide · Coding Standards

Neru is built and maintained by one person, entirely in spare time. If it's earned a place in your workflow, a sponsorship goes a long way:

👉 GitHub Sponsors

mimi grew out of this project — it's the window and space management pieces extracted into a standalone tool, for when neru is more than you need.

brew install --cask y3owk1n/tap/mimi

→ github.com/y3owk1n/mimi

MIT — see LICENSE.

brew install --cask y3owk1n/tap/neru  # macOS
# or download a binary: github.com/y3owk1n/neru/releases/latest