Pressing the "Opt" key to show Lauchpad

Question

In KDE Plasma I was able to press the Win key and the overview menu has been shown with my apps, favorites, recent, etc.

I would like a similar behavior for my Mac - just because of the muscle memory.

So, I would like to press the Opt key and after the release it would show the Launchpad.

But at the same time I still want to retain the ability to use the Opt key in combinations with other keys to trigger shortcuts, etc.

Any idea how can it be done?

Answer 1

There is no system-wide option for this. You can use Karabiner to achieve such behavior.

To change the Karabiner configuration open ~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json file and add the next content to rules array (separate rules by a comma if you have a couple of them):

{
    "description": "Open Launchpad if left Option pressed alone",
    "manipulators": [
        {
            "from": {
                "key_code": "left_option"
            },
            "to_if_alone": [
                {
                    "key_code": "launchpad",
                    "modifiers": []
                }
            ],
            "type": "basic" 
        }
    ]
}

Karabiner applies config dynamically, so you should be able to use new behavior right after saving the config file.