Remembering every Sway shortcut is tough. I wrote a small script that parses your Sway config, displays all bindsym shortcuts in a clean, searchable list via Rofi, and executes the command associated with whichever one you select.

It’s fast, keyboard-friendly, and great for discovery: “What did I bind to Mod + Shift + P again?” Now you can search, see, and execute it.

What the script does

• Reads your Sway config from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/sway/config (or ~/.config/sway/config)
• Finds all bindsym … lines
• Formats each entry nicely, e.g.

Mod + Return → exec alacritty

• Shows the list in a wide Rofi dmenu
• When you select an entry, it executes the associated command through swaymsg

Dependencies

• sway (for swaymsg)
• rofi
• awk, sed, grep (standard on most distros)
• notify-send (optional – shows an error if the config isn’t found)

The script

Save this as ~/.local/bin/rofi-sway-keybindings.sh and make it executable.

How it works

The core of the script is a small text-processing pipeline that reads the config and renders a nice two-column list for Rofi:

1. grep -E '^\s*bindsym' finds all bindsym lines (ignoring leading whitespace)
2. grep -v '^[[:space:]]*#' ignores full-line comments
3. sed 's/^\s*bindsym\s*//' strips the leading bindsym
4. awk splits the line into (and does some cleanup):

– keys: the first token (e.g. $mod+Return)
– cmd: the rest of the line (e.g. exec alacritty)

It also strips trailing inline comments (after #) and skips bindsym flags like --release or --locked before reading the key. Finally, it prettifies modifiers and prints a fixed-width column so the arrows line up.

Rofi presents that list with -dmenu. When you pick one, the script extracts the command part (after →) and sends it to swaymsg. That means anything you can put after bindsym (like exec …, workspace …, kill, etc.) will run on demand.

Usage

• Run the script from a terminal: rofi-sway-keybindings.sh
• Or bind it to a key in your Sway config, e.g.:

Tip: the window is set to 60% width for readability; tweak it via -theme-str if you prefer.

Nice touches in the UI

• Replaces $mod with Mod
• Shows Shift as ⇧ and Control as Ctrl
• Adds spacing around + so chords read clearly: Mod + ⇧ + q
• Aligns the left column to 35 characters for a tidy two-column look

Why this is handy

• Onboarding: perfect for new setups or when you come back after a while
• Discovery: search by key or by command to find what you already have
• Launcher: use it as a programmable “cheat sheet” that also runs things

Here are some screenshots (including filtering):