Keymaps

Durian uses vim-style key bindings throughout the GUI. The key sequence engine supports chord sequences (e.g. gi, gs, ga), counts (3j, 5n), and modal contexts — bindings can be scoped to “list”, “thread”, “search”, “tag picker”, or “compose normal”, and the same key can do different things in each.

Customize via ~/.config/durian/keymaps.pkl. Run durian validate keymaps to check your overrides. See Custom keymaps below.

Email list (default context)

Active when you’re in the thread list — typically the left/main pane without a thread expanded.

Navigation

Folders & profiles

Actions

Selection mode

Thread (open message)

Active once you’ve opened a thread with l or Enter. The cursor now lives inside the thread — j / k scroll the message body, n / N jump between messages within the thread.

n / N move a per-message focus indicator; combined with a count (5n) you skip several messages at once, which is faster than scrolling through a long quote-heavy thread.

Search popup

When the search popup is open (/), navigation keys work differently so they don’t collide with typing the query:

Tag picker

Same pattern when the tag picker is open (t):

Compose editor

The compose editor has its own modal vim mode (normal, insert, visual). See Vim compose for the full reference. One handy default:

Custom keymaps

Override any binding in ~/.config/durian/keymaps.pkl. The same key + modifiers + context triple as a default replaces that default; set enabled = false to remove it; any other entry is appended.

import "modulepath:/Keymaps.pkl" as K

keymaps: Listing<K.KeymapEntry> = new {
  // Use Shift-J / Shift-K to jump messages in a thread (instead of n / N)
  new { action = "next_message"; key = "J"; context = "thread"; supports_count = true }
  new { action = "prev_message"; key = "K"; context = "thread"; supports_count = true }

  // Disable the default `dd` delete chord
  new { action = "delete"; key = "dd"; sequence = true; enabled = false }
}

After editing:

durian validate keymaps

The GUI picks up changes on next launch (or via “Reload Keymaps” if you have it bound).

Action reference

The actions available in keymaps.pkl (full list also in schema/Keymaps.pkl):

All actions accept supports_count = true if they’re motion-style and benefit from a numeric prefix (e.g. 5j, 3n).