Select text that came out in the wrong keyboard layout, press one shortcut, and it is retyped correctly in place — and your keyboard switches over with it, so whatever you type next comes out right too. Thai Kedmanee ⇄ US QWERTY, on macOS and Windows.
รสนอำันีแสฟีกำ → iloveyouclaude
ggvxgxbh] → เเอปเปิ้ล
l;ylfu8iy[ → สวัสดีครับ
It works in any app that supports copy and paste: Chrome, Word, Anki, Line, Slack, Notes, the terminal.
Download the latest build from the Releases page — for a Mac or a Windows PC. There is no iPhone or iPad version.
The quickest way is one line in Terminal. Open Terminal (⌘ Space, type Terminal, Return), paste this and press Return:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Punnawit9285/keyflip/main/install.sh | bashIt downloads the latest build for your Mac — Apple silicon or Intel — checks it arrived intact, puts keyflip in Applications and opens it. Nothing passes through a browser, so there is no quarantined download for macOS to block and no "could not verify" warning to get past. Run the same line again to update; it quits the old keyflip first.
Or download it yourself. Open the .dmg — arm64 for Apple silicon,
x86_64 for Intel — drag keyflip to Applications, and open it from there.
macOS refuses the first time:
“keyflip” Not Opened — Apple could not verify “keyflip” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.
That is because this build is not notarized with a paid Apple Developer ID, not because anything is wrong with it. Click Done, then let it through once:
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and scroll down to Security.
- Next to “keyflip” was blocked to protect your Mac, click Open Anyway.
- Confirm with Open Anyway again and your password or Touch ID.
Right-click → Open used to be the way past this, and still is on macOS 14
and earlier, but since macOS 15 it only shows the same dialog again. Every new
version downloaded this way needs Open Anyway once more. Drag keyflip out
of the disk image to Applications before opening it — an app run from inside
a downloaded .dmg is launched from a temporary read-only copy, and an
Accessibility grant can never stick to that.
Either way, on first launch keyflip asks for Accessibility permission and offers to take you straight to the right pane:
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → turn on keyflip
keyflip starts by itself the moment you flip that switch — you do not have to open it again. Every shortcut utility on macOS needs this permission; there is no way to read a global hotkey without it.
It then lives in the menu bar as ก⇄A, with no Dock icon. Tick Start at login in its menu and you are done.
After every update, macOS asks for the permission again. The grant belongs to the exact build it was given to, and without a paid Developer ID every build counts as a different app. Quit the old keyflip, replace it in Applications (the Terminal line does both for you), open the new one and turn keyflip on once more. keyflip clears the old build's entry itself, so the list never shows a switch that is on but no longer does anything.
Open keyflip-<version>-setup.exe and click Install. That is the whole
installation — one click. There is no administrator prompt (it installs for
the current user only), no questions, and keyflip needs no permissions at all
on Windows.
It starts as soon as setup closes, says so with a notification, and from then on starts at every sign-in. Untick Start at login in its tray menu to stop that; upgrading later will not switch it back on. Uninstall from Settings → Apps like anything else.
SmartScreen may warn that the publisher is unknown, because the installer is not code-signed: More info → Run anyway.
git clone https://github.com/Punnawit9285/keyflip && cd keyflip
python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/python -m pip install -e .
.venv/bin/keyflipRun this way, the Accessibility permission belongs to your terminal rather than to keyflip. To build the downloadable artifacts yourself:
./packaging/build_macos.sh && ./packaging/build_dmg.sh # macOS
.\packaging\build_windows.ps1 # WindowsTap the right ⇧ Shift twice — same gesture on macOS and Windows.
Your left hand never leaves the text, there is no chord to memorise, and it is the same motion on both platforms.
A modifier on its own has nothing to modify, so no application anywhere binds it. There is no chord to lose, no letter to give up, and nothing to check against Chrome, Office, Anki or a GPU overlay — they all live in the one- and two-modifier space, which keyflip now leaves entirely alone.
The whole design problem moves somewhere else: right shift is a key you press dozens of times a minute while typing, so the gesture has to be recognised without going off mid-sentence. A tap only counts when the key was pressed for its own sake:
| What you do | Does it fire? |
|---|---|
| Tap right shift, tap it again within 400 ms | yes — as you let go of the second tap |
| Tap right shift, then hold it to type a capital | no: the second press was used as a modifier |
Type Hello World — right shift twice, with a letter each time |
no: a key pressed while shift was held cancels the tap |
| Hold right shift and let go | no: a tap has to be short, not held |
| Tap the left shift twice | no: the two shifts are separate keys, so the other one stays free |
| Tap once, pause, tap again | no: the second tap has to land inside the window |
| Tap three times | one flip, not two |
There are tests for every row of that table.
It fires on the release of the second tap, not the press, and that matters: the first thing keyflip does is send Copy, and a Copy sent while shift is still held arrives as Ctrl+Shift+C — a cloze in Anki, the element inspector in Chrome.
Two more things keep it out of the way:
- The key is matched by position, not by the character it produces. You are mid-sentence on a Thai layout when you reach for this, so it reads hardware key codes; the shortcut is identical in both layouts.
- Shift is never swallowed. Both taps reach the application exactly as normal — anything else would break typing capitals.
keyflip hotkey "double-rctrl" # another double tap
keyflip hotkey "ctrl+alt+shift+k" # or a plain chord
keyflip hotkey --which thai "ctrl+alt+cmd+t" # force English → Thai
keyflip hotkey --which english "ctrl+alt+cmd+e" # force Thai → EnglishDouble taps are double-rshift, double-lshift, double-rctrl,
double-lctrl, double-ralt, double-lalt, double-rcmd, double-lcmd
(cmd = win). double right shift, rshift x2 and rshift rshift all mean
the same thing. Widen or tighten the window with double_tap_ms in the config.
Chords still work: modifiers are ctrl, alt (= option), shift, cmd
(= win), and at least two are required — one modifier plus a letter is almost
certainly already taken by something. Safe chords if you prefer one:
ctrl+alt+shift+;, ctrl+alt+shift+space, ctrl+alt+cmd+\, or any
F13–F19.
There is no API on either OS for "give me the text the user has selected", so keyflip does the same thing every tool in this category does — with the failure modes handled:
- Wait for you to let go of the shortcut. Anything it types while shift is still physically down would arrive at the app as a different chord.
- Remember your clipboard, then send Copy.
- Watch the clipboard's change counter. If it never changes, nothing was selected — stop, touch nothing.
- Detect the direction, convert, send Paste.
- Switch the keyboard to the language the text is now in — Thai after a flip into Thai, English after a flip into English — so you can carry on typing. If it is already there, it is left alone.
- Put your clipboard back.
It never pastes when the text would not change, and it declines when there is
nothing to infer a direction from: a selected 2026 or +66 81-234-5678 is
left alone, because digits and punctuation sit on both layouts and guessing
would quietly mangle them. Use a one-way shortcut if you really do want those
converted.
On macOS a CGEventTap sees the keys either way, and its callback compares
two integers and hands the event straight back. Nothing is logged, buffered, or
inspected.
On Windows it depends on which shortcut you use, and this is the one real trade-off the double tap makes:
-
A chord goes through
RegisterHotKey, which asks the window manager to reserve one combination. keyflip is then not in the keystroke path at all, and if another program already owns the chord you are told at startup instead of the two silently fighting. -
A double tap cannot be registered —
RegisterHotKeyhas no way to say "this modifier, twice, on its own" — so it needs aWH_KEYBOARD_LLhook, which does put the program in the delivery path of every keystroke. That is the class of tool with a reputation for input lag in games and for upsetting anti-cheat and driver overlays. The hook is installed only when a double tap is configured, and its callback does nothing but compare a virtual-key code against a small dict before passing the key on. If you would rather not have it there at all, set a chord instead:keyflip hotkey "ctrl+alt+shift+l"
keyflip config prints the path and contents.
keyflip config --write creates it with the defaults.
- macOS —
~/Library/Application Support/keyflip/config.json - Windows —
%APPDATA%\keyflip\config.json
| Key | Default | |
|---|---|---|
hotkey |
"double-rshift" |
the main flip, direction auto-detected |
hotkey_to_thai |
"" |
optional one-way shortcut |
hotkey_to_english |
"" |
optional one-way shortcut |
double_tap_ms |
400 |
how long the second tap has to arrive |
switch_layout |
true |
switch the keyboard to the flipped text's language |
normalize_thai |
false |
fold a typed เ+เ into แ (see below) |
restore_clipboard |
true |
put your own clipboard back after pasting |
copy_timeout_ms |
600 |
how long to wait for the app to answer the copy |
paste_settle_ms |
350 |
how long to leave the text on the clipboard |
modifier_release_timeout_ms |
1000 |
how long to wait for your hand to come off |
notify |
false |
desktop notification on each flip (macOS) |
Start at login is a tick in the menu rather than a config key. macOS gets a
LaunchAgent at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.keyflip.agent.plist; Windows gets a
keyflip value under HKCU\...\CurrentVersion\Run. Both are per-user, need no
administrator rights, and untick cleanly — deleting either by hand also works.
ggvxgxbh] converts to เเอปเปิ้ล — two SARA E, because that is literally what
g g types on a Thai keyboard. It looks identical to แอปเปิ้ล but is a
different string, so search and spellcheck will not match it. Turning
normalize_thai on folds the pair into a single แ. It is off by default
because it is a spelling fix rather than a layout fix, and it means the
conversion no longer round-trips exactly.
keyflip run # listen for the shortcut (the default)
keyflip run --no-tray -v # stay in the console and log every flip
keyflip convert 'ggvxgxbh]' # convert without touching the clipboard
keyflip convert --to thai --normalize 'ggvxgxbh]'
keyflip doctor # check permissions, shortcut, clipboard
keyflip hotkey # show the current bindings
keyflip configmacOS will not open keyflip at all. If there is no Open Anyway button under Privacy & Security, open keyflip once more and look again — it only shows for a while after macOS has blocked the app. Or skip all of that with the one-line Terminal install, which also covers a Mac that calls keyflip "damaged": it fetches a fresh copy and checks it before installing.
Nothing happens when I press the shortcut. Run keyflip doctor. On macOS
the usual cause is that Accessibility permission is attached to the wrong
binary — macOS pins the grant to the binary's hash, so an updated, rebuilt or
replaced app needs a fresh one, even while the list still shows keyflip
switched on. Opening the new keyflip clears the old entry and asks again. If
it still does not start, remove keyflip from the Accessibility list with
−, add it again with +, and if it is still refused:
tccutil reset Accessibility com.keyflip.appThe app bounces and disappears when I open it. That is the permission check
failing. It should show an alert explaining so; if you want the detail in
writing, it is appended to
~/Library/Application Support/keyflip/startup.log. Note that running
keyflip from a terminal can look like it works while the app itself does
not — a terminal-launched process inherits the terminal's permission, so the
grant you need is the one on keyflip.app.
It works everywhere except one app. On Windows, a shortcut pressed while an elevated (administrator) window has focus only reaches an elevated program; run keyflip as administrator too. On macOS, a few apps refuse synthetic ⌘C — try the menu-bar item's Flip clipboard now instead: copy manually, flip, paste.
"another program already owns …" on Windows means exactly that. Pick
another combination with keyflip hotkey.
It fires while I am typing. It should not — a shift press that modifies
another key never counts as a tap. If it still happens, lower double_tap_ms.
And if it is not firing when you want it to, raise it.
The text flipped but the keyboard did not switch. keyflip only switches to a layout you have already enabled: Thai and an English one (ABC or U.S.) under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources on macOS, or Settings → Time & language → Language & region on Windows. Nothing switches when nothing was selected, so double-tapping shift on its own does not change the keyboard.
The wrong direction was chosen. Auto-detection goes by whether the selection contains Thai script. For a mixed selection, select less — or bind the one-way shortcuts.
.venv/bin/python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/python -m pytest -qThe layout table lives in src/keyflip/layout.py as one row per physical key,
written with \u escapes because several Thai characters are combining marks
that cannot be proofread in a literal table. The tests check it is a clean
bijection in both directions.
MIT.