Overview
What the Bridge is, why hotkeys need it, and how it keeps your keystrokes private.
The Bridge is a small service that runs on your computer and lets Sharkord react to hotkeys while you are in a game or another window. It is how you mute your microphone, deafen, or push to talk without leaving what you are doing.
Hotkeys and the Bridge are new. Expect rough edges and changes between releases. They are off by default, and Sharkord works fully without them.
Why It Exists
Sharkord runs in a browser, and a web page only receives key presses while its tab is in front. The moment Sharkord loses focus, the page stops hearing the keyboard, so a mute key cannot work. No browser setting changes that, and it is a deliberate security boundary.
The Bridge solves it from outside the browser. It runs as a normal program on your machine, watches for the keys you chose, and tells the Sharkord page when you press or release one.
your keyboard → Bridge (on your computer) → Sharkord tab in your browserWhat It Does
- Sits in your system tray, with a small window you can open to see your pairing token and which servers are connected.
- Reports presses and releases of the keys you bound in Sharkord, so it can drive a hold-style action like push to talk.
- Works with several Sharkord servers at once. A key you bound on more than one server fires on all of them.
- Talks only to your own computer. It listens on
127.0.0.1and refuses anything that does not present your pairing token.
What It Does Not Do
- It is not a Sharkord client. It cannot read messages, join voice, or reach your server.
- It does not send keystrokes anywhere except to the Sharkord tab you paired it with, on the same machine.
- It never forwards a key you did not bind. Sharkord sends it the list of keys to watch, and everything else is ignored.
- It does not store your keys on a server. Your binds live in your browser.
How Safe Is It?
The Bridge needs to see keyboard input system wide in order to notice your hotkeys, and that deserves the same caution as any program with that ability.
| Concern | How it is handled |
|---|---|
| Other websites talking to it | It only accepts connections that start with your pairing token, a random value created on your machine. A page that does not have the token is disconnected. |
| Network exposure | It binds to 127.0.0.1, so nothing outside your computer can reach it. |
| Logging | The log records which of your bound hotkeys fired. It never contains the pairing token. Logging every key is a separate trace level that you must switch on yourself. |
| What it can see | On Windows and X11 it sees all keys in order to match yours, and discards the rest. On Wayland it only receives the shortcuts you registered. See Platforms. |
The source is open at Sharkord/bridge, and you can build it yourself rather than trust a download.
Small Footprint
The Bridge is designed to be lightweight and unobtrusive. The binary is close to 6 MB in size, when running it consumes ~2 MB of RAM and virtually zero CPU.
Where To Go Next
- Setup: install, pair, and bind your first key.
- Platforms: what works on Windows, Linux, and Wayland.
- Troubleshooting: when a key does nothing.
- Plugin authors can offer their own bindable actions, see Hotkeys in the Client SDK.