Privacy

Data not collected

Karabiner-Elements does not transmit your data externally. The following data is never transmitted outside your Mac:

• Your keystrokes
• Your configuration data
• Your usage statistics
• And all other data except Karabiner-Elements version information.

About Input Monitoring

Karabiner-Elements exclusively receives input events from your keyboard, and then modifies them. To do this, Karabiner-Elements requires your Input Monitoring permissions approval.

Keystrokes captured with this privilege are processed entirely on your Mac. And because the process is protected by administrative privileges, keystrokes cannot be intercepted at by other applications on your Mac.

Specifically, the process with administrative privileges is karabiner_grabber; it is the core process in Karabiner-Elements that captures and modifies keystrokes.

Note: Karabiner-EventViewer operates with lower privileges than karabiner_grabber. Since it runs with user privileges, it cannot receive keystrokes during password inputs or similar actions when Secure Keyboard Entry is enabled.

Input event manipulation

After capturing keystrokes, the karabiner_grabber process modifies input events based on user settings. Modifying input events is also performed with security considerations in mind.

To prevent the addition of malicious input from other applications, karabiner_grabber performs closed operations within the process, which has administrative privileges. And the karabiner_grabber process does not knowingly alter, insert or manipulate any keystrokes other than as configured and expected by the user.

Note: Some combinations, such as fn+arrow keys, are implicitly changed. For a list, please see Implicit behavior.

User data and files

Karabiner-Elements and any bundled softwares, e.g., EventViewer, do not access or modify user data and files, except in the following data:

User files and data referenced by Karabiner-Elements:

• Configuration files specific to the application.
• The keyboard type configuration (ANSI, ISO, JIS) in the system settings.
• The “Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” configuration in the system settings.

About karabiner_machine_identifier

Since Karabiner-Elements v14.99.2, a unique random ID called karabiner_machine_identifier is generated for each machine during Karabiner-Elements installation. This ID may be included in the configuration file karabiner.json when machine-specific settings are made. For instance, when the Multitouch Extension is enabled, the following content is added to karabiner.json, and the string starting with krbn- is the karabiner_machine_identifier.

This string is completely random and does not contain any unique information about the user or the machine. In other words, this ID is not linked to information like your Apple ID or Mac’s serial number. Therefore, it is a safe ID to share with others, and there is no need to mask it when you share karabiner.json with others.

Of course, Karabiner-Elements never collect this ID.

Technical Information

The karabiner_machine_identifier is in the format krbn-{UUID v4}.

The generated ID is saved in /Library/Application Support/org.pqrs/tmp/karabiner_machine_identifier.json as the following forms.

{ "karabiner_machine_identifier": "krbn-818632bf-2a88-4ac0-ad0b-4524721c217b" }