OGS Kbd Nav: Play Go on OGS With Only Your Keyboard

PT-BR: Para falantes de língua portuguesa: assista ao tutorial aqui.

Mostly, because I wanted to. But I also do believe other players will benefit greatly from this, because:

Using the keyboard, where there are specialized keys for different actions, will diminish the likelihood of missclicks.
Even though it can be annoying to have to move the marker across the whole board when there are drastic changes in plays' locations, on average, your playing speed will increase because most plays occur near each other actually. And that means you're gonna have less friction between the interface and your brain, which will let you focus better on the game.

At first I didn't believe any of the benefits above, but, after trying it out for about 2 weeks, I can confidently say it did help, it did improve the UI/UX.

If you want to chat with me about the product, you can do so by joining its community.

In the same spirit of , I decided to add a new way and yet old way of interacting with the game of Go. Now anyone can play Go on OGS through only the keyboard.

Demo GIF. — An example of a sequence of plays using only arrow keys to move the stone marker into the play's position.

You can check out the open source code for this project here.

2.1. Installing the Extension

If you wish to install the most up-to-date version, you will have to activate your browser's developer mode and the upload the most recent version found on Github. You can check out more specific instructions about it here.

Otherwise, simply install the — hopefully — stable version from one of the browser extension stores:

Browser Extension Store
Chrome
Firefox
Edge

Warning: the shortcuts below might change overtime, so do check the project's main page to really be in touch with the latest table of shortcuts.

This extension currently only works if you have all the coordinates turned on.

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl` + `\`	Global switch: enables or disables the whole extension
`Ctrl` + `m`	Toggle the chat input box on a game page
`Ctrl` + `b`	Toggle the canvas overlay with the stone marker
`Ctrl` + `]`	Toggle the arrow keys
`Enter` or `f`	Click on the stone marker's location
`w` or `↑`	Move the stone marker up
`a` or `←`	Move the stone marker left
`s` or `↓`	Move the stone marker down
`d` or `→`	Move the stone marker right
`Enter` or `f`	Click on the stone marker's location
`Ctrl` + `[`	Pass
`Ctrl` + `;`	Toggle AI Analysis
`Ctrl` + `,`	Cycle through the different board sizes
`Ctrl` + `.`	Toggle the coordinates input field

Since we are talking about improving our lives with shortcuts, I'll leave you with 3 programs which might go well and beyond in this area:

Vimium: a browser extension which adds enough shortcuts to make navigating the web with only the keyboard possible.
Tridactyl: a follow-up to Vimium, with even more shortcuts, and tailored for Firefox.
qutebrowser: an entire browser made for navigating the web with only your keyboard.