ZMK CLI

A command line program to help set up ZMK Firmware.

ZMK CLI walks you through installing ZMK and setting up a GitHub repository to store and build custom firmware. It also automates some common tasks such as adding new keyboards to your repository.

The instructions below contain commands that need to be run in a terminal program. On Windows, use the Windows Terminal or PowerShell. On other operating systems, the terminal program is usually just named "Terminal".

Installation

Install Git

Install Git from https://git-scm.com/downloads.

If you have Windows 11, you can instead open a terminal and run:

winget install git.git -i

The Windows installer will give you lots of options. You can leave all of them as their defaults, but when you get to the "choosing the default editor used by Git" screen, you may want to select a different text editor to use when writing Git commit messages.

Install Python

ZMK CLI requires Python 3.10 or newer.

On Windows and macOS

Install the latest version of Python from https://www.python.org/downloads/.

If you have Windows 11, you can instead open a terminal and run:

winget install python3

On Linux

Most Linux distributions come with Python already installed. Open a terminal and run the following command to check its version:

python3 --version

If Python is not installed, install python3 with your package manager.

If the version is older than 3.10, you will need to find and install a package for a newer version of Python. On Ubuntu 20.04 and older, you can get Python 3.10 from the deadsnakes PPA with the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt install python3.10

You will then need to replace python3 with python3.10 in the rest of the installation instructions.

Install pipx

ZMK CLI can be installed with pip, but using pipx is recommended to avoid conflicts between Python packages.

On Windows and Linux

Open a terminal and run:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath

Some Linux distributions may disallow installing packages with pip. If this gives you an error, see the install instructions specific to your distribution.

Close and reopen your terminal, then run the following command. It should print a version number if everything is installed correctly:

pipx --version

On macOS

Open Terminal and run:

brew install pipx
pipx ensurepath

Install ZMK CLI

Next, run the following commands:

pipx install zmk
zmk --help

It should print a help message if everything installed correctly.

On Linux, you may get an error saying you need to install another package such as python3.10-venv. If so, follow the instructions in the error message, then try the above commands again.

Update ZMK CLI

If you have already installed ZMK CLI, you can update to the latest version with the following command:

pipx upgrade zmk

Usage

All ZMK CLI commands start with zmk. Run zmk --help for general usage instructions. For help with a specific subcommand, add --help after the subcommand, e.g. zmk init --help.

Initialize a Repository

⚠️ If you have already created a repo and cloned it to your computer, you do not need to run this command. Set the user.home setting to point to the existing repo instead.

The zmk init command walks you through creating a GitHub repository, then clones it to your computer so you can edit it.

Open a terminal and use the cd command to move to a directory where you'd like to place the ZMK files, then run zmk init. For example:

cd ~/Documents
zmk init

Follow the instructions it gives you. If you already have a ZMK config repo, select "Clone an existing repo" and enter the repo's URL, for example:

Repository URL: https://github.com/myusername/zmk-config

Otherwise, select "Create a new ZMK config repo" and it will walk you through creating a new repo.

Once you finish following all the instructions, you will have a copy of the repo stored on your computer. All zmk commands will run on this repo (unless the working directory is inside a different repo). If you ever forget where the repo is located, you can run zmk cd to find it.

Now that you have a repo created, see Customizing ZMK for documentation on how to customize it, and see the instructions below for how ZMK CLI can automate some common tasks.

Keyboard Management

Add a Keyboard

To start building firmware for a new keyboard, run zmk keyboard add. Follow the instructions to select a keyboard (and controller board if necessary), and it will add it to the list of firmware to build and copy a default keymap into your repo.

You can then run zmk code <keyboard> to open the keymap in a text editor.

This command reads from a local copy of ZMK to determine the supported keyboards. If the keyboard you want to use isn't listed, try running zmk update to update the local copy to the latest version of ZMK. If it still isn't listed, you may be able to find a Zephyr module that provides it, or you may need to create it yourself.

Remove a keyboard

To remove a keyboard from the build, run zmk keyboard remove and select the item to remove. For a split keyboard, you will need to run this twice and remove the left and right sides.

This simply removes a keyboard from the build.yaml file. It does not delete any .keymap or .conf files.

List Supported Keyboards

Run zmk keyboard list to print a list of supported keyboard hardware.

Create a New Keyboard

If ZMK doesn't support your keyboard yet, you can run zmk keyboard new to create a new keyboard from a template.

Note that this will generate most of the boilerplate for you, but you will still need to manually edit the files to match your keyboard. See the New Keyboard Shield guide for how to finish writing the keyboard files.

Module Management

Zephyr modules can add support for new keyboards, behaviors, and other features to ZMK. Use the zmk module command to install modules into your repo:

zmk module add     # Add a module
zmk module remove  # Remove an installed module
zmk module list    # List the installed modules
zmk update         # Update the local copies of ZMK and modules to their latest versions

Edit Keymap and Config Files

The zmk code command will open ZMK files in a text editor:

zmk code                    # Open the repo directory in an editor
zmk code <keyboard>         # Open <keyboard>.keymap in an editor
zmk code --conf <keyboard>  # Open <keyboard>.conf in an editor
zmk code --build            # Open build.yaml in an editor

The first time you run this command, it will ask you which editor you want to use. If you want to change this choice later or use an editor that wasn't listed, see the core.editor and code.explorer settings.

Push Changes to GitHub

Run zmk cd to go to the repo directory. From here, you can run git commands manage the repo.

For example, after adding a keyboard to your repo and editing its keymap, you can run the following commands to push your changes to GitHub and trigger a firmware build:

git add .
git commit
git push

You will need to authenticate with GitHub before the git push command will work. The easiest way to do this is to install the GitHub CLI and run

gh auth login

but you can also use a personal access token. If using an access token, make sure you create it with the "workflow" scope option selected.

Download Firmware from GitHub

After pushing changes, GitHub will automatically build the firmware for you. Run zmk download (or zmk dl for short) to open the GitHub actions page in your browser.

From this page, you can click on a build (the latest is at the top) to view its status. If the build succeeded, you can download the firmware from the "Artifacts" section at the bottom of the build summary page.

ZMK Version Management

The zmk version command manages the version of ZMK you are using:

zmk version             # Print the current ZMK version
zmk version --list      # List the available versions
zmk version <revision>  # Switch to the version given by <revision>

You can set the revision to any Git tag, branch, or commit:

zmk version v0.3     # Switch to tag "v0.3"
zmk version main     # Switch to branch "main"
zmk version 1958217  # Switch to commit "1958217"

Note that zmk version --list will only list tagged versions.

Configuration

The zmk config command manages settings for ZMK CLI:

zmk config                 # List all settings
zmk config <name>          # Print the value of the setting <name>
zmk config <name> <value>  # Set <name> to <value>
zmk config --unset <name>  # Remove the setting <name>

By default, these settings are stored in a file in your user profile directory. Run zmk config --path to get the location of this file. You can change where the settings file is stored by setting a ZMK_CLI_CONFIG environment variable to the new path to use, or by adding a --config-file=<path> argument when running zmk.

Other commands use the following settings:

core.editor

Command line for a text editor to use with the zmk code command.

For example, to set Visual Studio Code as the editor and make it always open a new window, run:

zmk config core.editor "code --new-window"

core.explorer

Command line for a file explorer to use with the zmk code command when opening a directory.

If this setting is not set, the core.editor tool will be run instead. Set this setting when using a text editor that does not support opening directories.

user.home

The path to the repository to use whenever zmk is run and the working directory is not inside a ZMK config repository.

For example, to point ZMK CLI to an existing repo at ~/Documents/zmk-config, run:

zmk config user.home ~/Documents/zmk-config

Development

If you would like to help improve ZMK CLI, you can clone this repo and install it in editable mode so your changes to the code apply when you run zmk. First, open a terminal to the root directory of the repository.

You may optionally run the following commands inside a virtual environment if you don't want to install ZMK CLI's dependencies globally or if your OS disallows doing this.

To install ZMK CLI in editable mode, run:

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pre-commit install

After running pre-commit install, your code will be checked when you make a commit, but there are some slower checks that do not run automatically. To run these additional checks, run these commands:

pyright .
pylint zmk

GitHub will also run these checks and report any errors when you make a pull request.