qmk_firmware VS zmk

Compare qmk_firmware vs zmk and see what are their differences.

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qmk_firmware zmk
1587 157
16,902 2,275
2.0% 6.3%
10.0 9.6
1 day ago 3 days ago
C C
GNU General Public License v3.0 only MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

qmk_firmware

Posts with mentions or reviews of qmk_firmware. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-01-14.

zmk

Posts with mentions or reviews of zmk. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-06-27.
  • Nice!view not working when leds are turned on?
    2 projects | /r/crkbd | 27 Jun 2023
    Not sure which information you mean, but here goes. Nice!Nano v2 Pinout (shows Arduino pin mapping). Nice!View Getting Started (explains how to remap the CS pin for a non-native shield like Corne). The overlay file where "cs-gpios" is set for the nice_view_adapter in ZMK. If you look at the Corne Schematic, you'll see as shown in the labels in this image that the bottom two pins (B2, B4, B5, B6) don't appear to be used for a column, row, or the OLED header. But the only way to really verify is to pull the KiCAD file for your Corne version and check yourself. I think D0 ("Data") should work. It appears to go to an optional I2C connection.
  • Options for Chocofi keyboard
    2 projects | /r/keyboards | 15 Jun 2023
    Depending on a controller you will be programming features of your keyboard using QMK or ZMK (there are alternatives but these two are the most popular). You can check documentation of these tools regarding display but some nice sum up is in the related article on splitkb: https://docs.splitkb.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010533820-What-can-you-use-an-OLED-display-for-
  • What's a very simple config change that you can't live without?
    11 projects | /r/neovim | 2 Jun 2023
    The other firmware I wrote for my wireless programable keyboard based on ZMK.
  • Wireless Sofle RGB in a low profile case.
    5 projects | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 1 Jun 2023
    The code to enable the second encoder is outlined in this Pull Request https://github.com/zmkfirmware/zmk/pull/728, but since it's not in the main ZMK codebase, to use this feature you need to roll your own ZMK with this PR included. And luckily there is already a kind person who did this in https://github.com/narze/zmk/pull/2
  • Keyboard for Carpel Tunnel
    2 projects | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 28 May 2023
    Try the Kinesis Advantage Pro because you can customize with ZMK. If you have DIY skills and want to customize event further. There's the open source version. Spit keyboards with QMK are good too.
  • Isn't CTRL and SHIFT keys too far to reach?
    2 projects | /r/starcraft2 | 10 May 2023
    Get a keyboard with open-source firmware (https://qmk.fm/, https://zmk.dev/)
  • looking for firmware
    2 projects | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 9 May 2023
  • Mounted a trackpoint to my ZMK keyboard
    4 projects | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 7 May 2023
    The firmware part was the easiest, I just followed the detailed tutorial in the PR from /u/Kimcha87 and it compiled perfectly. Here’s the link to the PR if you want to give it a go.
    4 projects | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 7 May 2023
  • Handwired Skeletyl with seeed xiao SAMD21 posible?
    2 projects | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 30 Apr 2023
    ZMK doesn't support wired split comms. There's a PR though, so you could test that with your bare MCUs first: https://github.com/zmkfirmware/zmk/pull/1117.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing qmk_firmware and zmk you can also consider the following projects:

kmk_firmware - Clackety Keyboards Powered by Python

qmk - My fork of QMK firmware (see https://github.com/joric/qmk/wiki)

vial-qmk - QMK fork with Vial-specific features.

kmonad - An advanced keyboard manager

pico-examples

nrfmicro - Pro Micro-compatible Bluetooth 5 board with Li-Po charger and USB-C

zmk-config - ZMK Configuration

Sweep - Sweep - a small promicro based keyboard inspired by the Ferris.

qmk_firmware - See the "forkreadme" branch or the following link for a description of branches maintained in this fork.

Kaleidoscope - Firmware for Keyboardio keyboards and other keyboards with AVR or ARM MCUs.

miryoku - Miryoku is an ergonomic, minimal, orthogonal, and universal keyboard layout.