Keyboard Overlay

A macOS menubar app that overlays a transparent keyboard on the screen.

Features

• Created for those who are learning a new language or need to type on a keyboard that has a different layout;
• Supports any keyboard layout standard available on macOS;
• Displays special characters that can be typed by pressing key combinations with modifier keys;
• Allows you to set a keyboard shortcut to hide and show the keyboard overlay;
• It can be displayed over any application, even when it is in full screen;
• Does not prevent mouse clicks on elements shown below the keyboard overlay.

Requirements

• Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• Requires accessibility permission in the Privacy & Security section of the System Settings app to be able to detect keyboard events.

Building

This project uses GitHub Actions to automatically build binaries:

Automated Builds

• Push to main: Automatically builds Debug and Release versions
• Pull Requests: Builds and tests changes
• Tagged Releases: Creates release with DMG and ZIP files

Manual Building

To build locally with Xcode:

# Build Debug version
xcodebuild -project KeyboardOverlay.xcodeproj -scheme "Keyboard Overlay" -configuration Debug build

# Build Release version  
xcodebuild -project KeyboardOverlay.xcodeproj -scheme "Keyboard Overlay" -configuration Release build

# Create archive
xcodebuild -project KeyboardOverlay.xcodeproj -scheme "Keyboard Overlay" -configuration Release archive -archivePath KeyboardOverlay.xcarchive

Artifacts

The GitHub Actions workflow produces:

• Debug build (.app bundle)
• Release build (.app bundle)
• Archive (.xcarchive)
• DMG installer
• ZIP archive

Contributing

If you find this app useful and want to help improve it, feel free to suggest new features or fork the repository. Pull requests are welcome.

License

GNU General Public License