Kando is a cross-platform desktop pie menu launcher that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, including Wayland compositors. It opens a radial menu on a hotkey and lets users select applications, files, or shortcuts by moving the cursor toward a slice, and can also be controlled from the command line to open specific menus or trigger shortcuts.
The project distinguishes itself through a gesture-based selection system that interprets pointer movement direction and distance rather than requiring precise clicking, and an input device abstraction layer that normalizes input from mouse, stylus, touch, game controllers, and keyboards into a unified event stream. It supports nested menu gesture recognition for traversing multiple submenu levels in a single fluid motion, and an application context switching system that monitors active window changes to switch the active pie menu configuration based on the foreground application. An inter-process communication bridge exposes a JSON-based interface for external tools to trigger menu actions and query menu state.
The menu system supports multiple navigation modes including gesture dragging, held-key browsing, hover selection, and point-and-click, with the ability to switch between centered and anchored modes. Users can create and edit menus graphically, build nested hierarchies, customize appearance through themes and icons, and bind global shortcuts for system-wide accessibility. The tool can launch applications, open files and websites, simulate keyboard shortcuts, execute macros, and paste text into active applications, all triggered by directional gestures from the pie menu. Installation is available through package managers, standalone binaries, or pre-packaged packages across all supported platforms.
