The new Microsoft copilot key is impossible to properly remap.
4mon 10d ago by discuss.tchncs.de/u/attero in technology from discuss.tchncs.de
The new Microsoftslop copilot key always sends the following key-sequence when pressed:
copilot key down: left-shift-down left-meta-down f23-down f23-up left-meta-up left-shift-up
copilot key up: <null>
This means there's no real key-up event when you release the key --> it can't be used (properly) as a modifier like ctrl or alt.
The workaround is to send a pretend key-up event after a time delay, but then you mustn't be too slow / fast when pressing a shortcut.
- Linux workaround: https://github.com/m-bartlett/remap-copilot?tab=readme-ov-file
- Windows workaround https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys/issues/560
- https://xcancel.com/dcolascione/status/2019936377408811319
tldr: AI took a perfectly working modifier key from you.
--- edit ---
Some keyboards apparently do the "right" thing and don't send the whole sequence at once, you can remap those properly with keyd, see: https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd/issues/1025#issuecomment-2971556563/ https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd/issues/825
copilot key down: left-shift-down left-meta-down f23-down
copilot key up: f23-up left-meta-up left-shift-up
this will still break left-shift + remapped copilot and left-meta + remapped copilot, but RCtrl remaps should work as expected
I'm gonna hug my old ThinkPad when I get home today
I do that all the time.
There's nothing weird about it, stop looking at me like that
Its totally normal. And its cool if you like to hug multiple Thinkpads at the same time š
Congrats Microsoft, you managed to enshittify a goddamn keyboard key.
And they took the place of a useful key to put that
I reckon the co pilot key is used more than the key it replaced. I dont even know what that key did.
On laptops it usually replaces right ctrl, sometimes right alt.
Both these are needed to make lots of shortcuts viable, or possible at all with one hand.
right alt is also an importand 3rd shift layer for many languages' keyboards, hence them replacing right ctr often instead of the less popular alt.
The open menu key. It's the one I remap to Compose (for special characters, like Comp+--- to get ā).
If you remap alt to ctrl as God intended, then this key would take the place of alt.
When was the last time you on purpose used the application key on your keyboard to open the right-click context menu so you could navigate it using the arrow keys? Because that is the key it replaced - Microsoft has demanded for the last 32 years that the two spaces between CTRL and ALT on Windows compatible keyboards are used for the Windows key, and the Application Key, so that people using one-button mice (or no mice) can use the Windows GUI.
Well... I use it. I find it faster to use than the right click gesture in the touchpad and the touchpad's buttons are awful to press, so I use the keyboard button and navigate with the touchpad
Is a middle click even an option on a touchpad? I get annoyed that I can't even right click hold and then left click. Rip fishing minigames on trackpad
Sorry, I meant right click. By the way, tapping with 3 fingers usually works as a middle click, at least on gnome
I used it regularly before I got a keyboard that turned out to have a useless Fn in its place
I've used it yesterday. Haven't been at the desktop today, but will use the key when I get at it.
Normally it's mapped to alt in my setup, while alt is remapped to ctrl, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to do that with Cinnamon. Meanwhile, Double Commander allows adding useful actions in the context menu, and Emacs has the commands menu (M-x) mapped to the āapplicationā key.
My laptop has a control key there. I know on some larger desktop keyboards there's the application key, but I've not seen one on many keyboards from the last 10 years
TIL I even had an application key there. I don't think I've ever used it.
Today. I don't like mouse inputs.
Let's be grateful, they could have swapped it with the spacebar.
You could even argue that bottom row is for command keys, not macro or function keys like F keys or print, pause, etc., but then again Fn key is literally called function
Doesn't seem to be present on my keyboard. š
Oh, wow. There it is. The keyboard of my dreams.
Using one of these while on acid does not seem advisable, though.
My eyes, my eyes!
this is the truly Alienware keyboard
What's the keyboard? Always wanted to try an arisu/Alice/derivations.
I'm... Reborn and in love with mech keyboards. š
Neat, they have a near full keys version now. I've bookmarked their smaller Alice board from before, but I don't really follow mech keebs much. This is amazing news. Thanks.
Yeah, you don't sacrifice any convenience here, in my opinion:
Netscape Navigator key, 1337 retronaut.
It's the Bixby Button all over again.
It's arguably worse, because Samsung has full control over software, hardware, and firmware of their devices.
Even if MS would like to fix this mess, they can't.
This mess is by design. They pay the manufacturers (a pretty penny, Iām sure) to put it on there.
Theoretically I think they could redefine it as a new distinct key instead of the combo ā as is done with the windows and context-menu keys. That would allow it to be remapped properly.
well thatās what they should have done but now what itās implemented there are a lot more parties that need to come to the table to fix the messā¦ some hardware might not be able to fix the mess, but iād be surprised if this shit show were implemented on hardware rather than firmware
It has to me software/firmware based, right? Right!?
given the complexity of doing in hardware, and the simplicity of doing it software, youād hope yes (in which case perhaps there will be firmware hacks) but you can never truly account for the stupidity of hardware companies
Words of wisdom, for sure.
Eh, MS can just issue new requirements for their compatibility stamp, just like they did in the first place and many times previously. Newly produced laptop and keyboard models would have the fixed behavior, the same way they got the broken behavior.
new ones sure but there are a bunch of these broken machines out there now: far more than there otherwise would be, because microslop forced the upgrade for windows 11
i guesssss if they do it soon enough the existing models will still be in their support period and theyād kinda be forced to update, assume itās a software or firmware fix
Did Microsoft demand vendors include such a button with those specs? If not, that sounds like a vendor issue, and I'd be looking at other vendors. Either way I'm happy to use keyboards/OSs without that "feature."
It is/was required for vendors to use the AI PC / Copilot+ label and Microsoft "invented" the key-sequence.
src: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/26/24112500/microsoft-ai-pc-intel-windows-copilot-key-requirements
So to be clear, this key sequence is just how windows interpret the key, the hardware is exactly the same and any other OS can still use it as the context menu key?
Edit : oh, just saw the thing about the linux workaround. So no, they actually fucked it up on hardware level. Wow.
nope, the hardware / keyboard controller sends a complete key sequence instead of a distinguishable key-up and key-down event. The OS can interpret that sequence as it sees fit, but you loose the physical key-up signal when you release the key with your finger.
That's insane. Even if they did this intentionally to be as difficult as possible, they locked themselves out of being able to detect long presses?
I've made an update edit: Some hardware vendors fucked up when to send the key-up-sequence apparently so now every keyboard can behave differently. I don't know if this makes the situation better or worse.
Though any competent manufacturer, especially when talking about laptops, would still have the application key under FN (as is shown in that example image), and give the ability for users to select which one is the default function in the BIOS.
*on the firmware level, to be precise: keyboard polling is commonly done by the Embedded Controller, which is flashable (not by users, generally, tho, but during the uefi update, for example). Sometimes there are separate keyboard controllers, but those are not really common.
So, if vendors want to fix this garbage, they can. Smth tells me, they don't care, tho
AI PC / Copilot+ label
Okay that sounds solvable, at least. I mean, I hate it, but it seems that a person is getting what they pay for here. Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully there will be plenty of non-AI PC / Copilot+ computers and keyboards.
*Sry for the washed out colors. This was originally an HDR video.
Leave it in HDR next time. As someone who owns an HDR monitor and a phone with an HDR display, there is simply not enough content out there outside of movies and games.
I converted the original video to a GIF and that is sadly the outcome.
Yeah and I'm asking you to please don't lol
My winter heating bill halved when I switched to HDR mode on my monitor.
Why are you apologizing?
Edit: the hivemind has spoken. You must always repent for posting washed out HDR video.
They work at Disney +.
What do you mean? The human eye can't see more than 720p.
That's what they want you to believe š¤«
"tldr: AI took a perfectly working modifier key from you." - 'AI' ?? I can't see how this is anything but Microshit and Capitalism that 'takes away" anything..
That's the former right click button location. They took it away to implement a AI button. So it's AI that's done it, not literally but figuratively.
They (Microsoft) did actually also originally implement it, the application key was added to Microsoft keyboards in 1994 along with the Windows key. It's meant to give compatibility to the Windows user interface when your PC had a mouse with only one button. Don't remember those being very relevant in the recent years.
So it's Microsoft deciding that their right-click button isn't necessary any more after 32 years, and swapping it for a Co-Pilot/Windows Search button.
I use the the 'right click button' literally every single day. It's super useful for not having to move between the mouse and keyboard for tasks.
Also, this is on Linux, and I think it's fair to say that the key has evolved to become a fairly standard part of keyboards and operating systems. Just because MS were the first ones to use it doesn't give them some kind of say control over the idea, at least beyond the scope of their own hardware, and I don't think anyone is arguing that they don't have the right to change their own hardware. It's just a bad decision.
The āapplication keyā is useful for remapping as a modifier, regardless of the OS. It's recognized as a distinct key in both MacOS and Linux, just like the āwindowsā key.
Noted. Do not buy used laptops with microslop cancer button.
A shame because they're all still good hardware. Just don't want to deal with the cursed button.
Yeah I've bought my last couple laptops from my company's asset disposal department, I've gotten pretty good deals and usually just need to replace the battery after a few years. Not looking forward to when their stock starts getting into the models with slop buttons.
It's just a button that worse case scenario does nothing for you.
It takes up space you can't use.
Specially in laptops, that's very bad.
Less than one percent of the keyboard being less-then-useful, that you can even make useful with some effort, is hardly a dealbreaker, it doesn't even rises in severity to "bad" let alone "very bad"
Dunno about you, but I use every key on larger layouts, so this is definitely a hard no for me.
As long as there are other options, this is a straight up downgrade for no benefit. So absolutely no.
I also use 100% of whatever I have. It's just I don't get how reducing it by less than 1% is a dealbreaker. It's weird to me how sometimes people are hung up on some minor issue
You could always just take them apart and use the components
Its not immune from removal via knife
Just don't buy an AI slop PC and get a Thinkpad, or a Framework laptop instead. Vote with your wallet. If you already own an AI PC, well, OP's post might help.
all new thinkpads have copilot buttons
Well damn.
Well, t480/t470p ftw. The latter has better specs, the former has coreboot
i did say new.
I mean, "fuck new thinkpads then"
Pretty sure MS made this a "standard keyboard" button, which could mean it needs to be included for the OEM to be able to put windows on the machine.
Frameworks aren't available where I live and I'm not getting anywhere near Lenovo after they shipped laptops with malware installed.
Yes, we know they ship some PCs with Windows ;) Seriously though at this point regardless of OS, I prefer to load it myself.
Lmao. All non shit PCs are āai PCsā now. Itās already built into the CPU. All you need is not 8 gigs of ram and to put that button and Microsoft hands you that sweet sweet dosh.
happy to be typing this comment on a framework laptop, where no such key is to be found.
interesting post, and thanks for the info. i cant believe the crap MS pulls. Linux is easier than ever. Join us.
The WHATNOW is impossible to properly remap?
That nuisance you pop off with a flathead screwdriver and throw in the trash can.
Honestly X11 keystroke and modifier management is not that good. Because were it better, you could map any sequence to a different kind of action, possibly intercepting them. Instead you have keystrokes with modifiers, sometimes the keystroke is the modifier key alone. One can work around some things of this with, say, WM menus in FVWM called by one keystroke with modifier and then keybindings for menu items to have something like Emacs UX.
If this garbage is on my keyboard I will drill that motherfucker out no second thought
I have a Lenovo usb keyboard with a fn Key in place of the Ctrl key that has absolutely no purpose. It's for volume control like fn+F7 BUT... IT ALSO HAS DEDICATED BUTTONS FOR VOLUME CONTROL!!
After the nth time I accidentally switched fn and Ctrl I took a screwdriver and popped it out permanently (being USB it doesn't report fn status to the os and of course the BIOS doesn't allow FN remapping because it's not a laptop)
IT ALSO HAS DEDICATED BUTTONS FOR VOLUME CONTROL
Bro, that's so cool ..... your keys have backup's
Or just glue a new keycap in place
nail polish. cost next to nothing, any color you like
Why would you buy this garbage?
It is shocking difficult to buy a new laptop without one. Yes, I know about Framework, System 76, etc, but go to your local big box store and every laptop is covered in either Microsoft logos or Apple logos.
MacBooks are frikkin amazing though. There is nothing in the PC world that even comes close.
Seems like you're comparing ā¬1500 MacBooks to ā¬300 laptops.
It's always this. "This brand new Ā£1500 laptop I don't share with anyone, coddle like a newborn and barely use for anything other than running Office is so much better than the Ā£350 ten year old laptop I was sharing with my entire family and was used for playing video games, downloading warez and pirated media, and running Office."
To be fair, if I had to choose between Windows and MacOS I'd go with the latter since I do most of my job inside a terminal. A good terminal emulator, a Unix-like environment and Firefox covers most of my needs and somehow iTerm2 is a better emulator than anything I used on Linux.
Still, I'd rather avoid walled gardens and proprietary OSes.
More like ā¬4400 and itās used heavily for 8+ hours a day as a development machine. Itās 4 years old by now (M1 Max, 64GB) and it still handles everything I can throw at it without breaking a sweat.
Cheap laptops are nothing but trouble, in the end itāll cost you more in replacements and lost productivity.
I enjoy my T480 I got off craigs for 120$. Cheap but awesome.
To be fair that was also over a grand new. Not M1 Pro/Max territory but comparable to M1 Air new which outperforms it handily. But is also newer so it's a moot point.
They're all great laptops, just at quite different price points.
You can get a 2020 M1 / 2022 M2 Macbook air for ~400ā¬, that will mop the floor with all new hardware in that price range released even today (completely fanless/noiseless btw.). It also has decent linux support via asahi and Apple will still probably provide 5+ years of macOS updates anyway.
- geekbench: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16388159?baseline=16471197
- ebay.de sold macbooks: https://www.ebay.de/sch/111422/i.html?_fsrp=1&_udlo=150&rt=nc&_nkw=macbook+air+%28m1%2Cm2%29&_sacat=111422&_sop=13&LH_PrefLoc=3&LH_Sold=1&LH_ItemCondition=1000%7C2010%7C1500%7C2020%7C2030%7C2500%7C3000
- random lenovo: https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/lenovo+v15+g5+83gw00a7ge+820626
The simple trick to owning nice hardware is to never give vendors your money directly, let others burden the depreciation.
Yup, they're 'frikkin' amazing at locking you in. Microslop is just chasing that with OEMs, and doing a great fucking job too.
Now, is this every single make of laptop out there allowing this at the hardware level? How are they doing it? MoBo firmware? BIOS?
Locking me in to what and how? Itās a laptop, a tool, not a religion. I donāt give a fuck about any of that shit as long as the OS gets out of the way, stuff just works and I can get on with my job.
Yeah, no. I have to use a MacBook at work and there is nothing it does well that an equivalently-priced laptop from any other major PC manufacturer doesn't do better. Performance is good, but not great, and, again, is trounced by most of its equivalents, even the Surface Book. Window management in MacOS is appalling, the built in applications range from adequate to basically unusably bad (looking at you, Safari) and every bit of it seems to have been designed to be different first and better second.
Yeah, my complaints about Apple all stem from the fact that my industry has a standard program that only runs on Macsā¦ And every Mac Iāve used has inevitably ended up taking 4x as long to do basically anything else when compared to Windows or Linux. The only reason I ever use a Mac is because my job requires it, and even then it is only begrudgingly; if there was a way to run the program on anything else, I would have done so a long time ago.
And yeah, I agree 100% about the ādifferent first, better secondā design choices. Lots of the most frustrating things about Macs are due to intentional design choices that Apple makes. Not because it is better for the user, but simply because it is different.
VM the program? I know that seting up a Apple VM is nothing easy but that will allow you to just use you preferred OS and run that program in the VM. I use winboat on my Pop_OS! laptop for some software that really needs Windows and does not work well (at all) in wine. I dislike the we know better that you mentality that comes with buying a Mac. Hell the amount of times the update fubar'ed my system because Apple decided to update software that has nothing to do with the OS is too damn high.
A lot of the ādifferent firstā has to do with Microsoft patenting UI elements, methodologies and design choices. Iāve never understood why people trash Apple computers so vehemently. Theyāre a fairly robust software suite targeted at consumers and amateur creatives thatās tailor made to run on the hardware it ships with, if you donāt use those things thatās fine, but it doesnāt mean itās bad.
Iāve had laptops from almost every major manufacturer and frankly the MacBooks Iāve had stood out save for a few niche problems like dock compatibility. The only manufacturer that regularly comes even remotely close is Lenovo. My work provided dell is 4 years old, cost the same as than an equivalent Mac at the time and is trash. I get 90 minutes out of the battery if Iām lucky, trackpad feels horrible and is inaccurate, canāt do gestures reliably and is horribly unintuitive (must click on the bottom left corner to get a left click despite the whole thing being clickable (tapping works about half the time) but itās placed so far left i think itās made for left handed people), case is warped because the battery swelled and had to be replaced after 2 months, it bitches about the charger it was shipped with saying itās underpowered, the screen has bleeding on many pixel clusters. Why was that thing listed so high when the Mac we bought another user at the same price still works and has only had a problem with cheap dock compatibility? Oh because it said i7, had an ssd (which failed), a āmulti-touch/gesture capableā trackpad. and a numpad. This has been the general quality of 4/5 of work provided laptops, 3 were Dell, one was HP, the only good one was a Lenovo. All were business targeted models with not too dissimilar pricing from a MacBook. I als deploy a lot of machines, mostly laptops, and honestly the only ones that do not come half functional out of the box or need warranty in less than a year are Apple and Lenovo.
Not just Microsoft, Apple is also a patent troll
All megacorps are
Patents need to be abolished
Yes but a lot of the things that frustrate people coming from Windows to Mac are because a Microsoft patented functionality to Windows that Apple had back in the 90ās.
Performance is good, but not great, and, again, is trounced by most of its equivalents, even the Surface Book.
Sure, you can find an equivalent priced laptop that will beat the MBPro at one metric, but itāll fall short on others. Itās faster but it has a cheap case , crappy trackpad, shit screen or terrible battery life, etc.
There are very few laptops out there that are as good in every metric as a MBPro. It is simply the best total package.
An embarrassing new low, even with the bars they've already set. And fitting, for this being the (egregiously multiply-) branded button to launch the shit show. Christ, this has been a fucking carnival lmao.
Microslop has now regressed to implementing "features" very closely resembling - in sophistication and effect - my own bumbling, desperate, ignorant attempts at similar ("making a button behave like a macro"), using AutoHotKey, somewhere between 15-20 years ago.
And do I understand that they both shipped that, on hardware, AND it's broken so badly it can't be easily remedied?
I don't know what to say. It's like all the geniuses of comedy who died too young are doing this, all of it.
(No shade whatsoever to AHK, it was, probably still is, awesome at its job!)
Edit: suddenly realized it's just on purpose, probably. Anyway, rant remains lol
You can remap that key on a hardware level with a little flathead screwdriver. šŖ šļø
Never thought I'd say this... I'm considering a Mac as my next laptop.
Base model Macbook Airs are very hard to beat for price:performance, especially now the new base model has 16gb of RAM. I've been to numerous local computer shops and felt and tried numerous Windows laptops that were around the same price and they all felt like flimsy plastic trash.
The Mac Mini is also very good for its price and size. My dad is considering a base model Mini to replace his Windows office computer which is on 10 and reached EOL and he doesn't want 11.
Just the battery life alone will be enough to hook you on macs. The air is such a nice piece of hardware for the price.
When you realise the main difference between an Air and a Pro is active cooling on the CPU on the Pro, it makes sense why the Air is a powerhouse. Knowing the M-series is very efficient, you'll only notice the difference on heavy loads. (I know the Pro has more options, but it only makes a difference in specific workloads)
Paying the exuberant Apple tax for more soldered RAM and storage is something you'll never see me do as long as there are ultrabooks without permanently attached storage.
I have an M1 Pro thatās still going strong without issues, even with 8GB RAM. Theyāre insanely durable (repair issues aside) and MacOS is wildly good at resource management.
Can confirm. Decided to pop for a base MBA, but with 32g ram, about a year ago, and itās fantastic. Unbelievable battery efficiency, completely silent (passively cooled), and still decently performant for when I want to compile something/do a cpu intensive thing. Iāve used MBPs as corp-issue dev machines for nearly a decade and a half now, so Iām quite comfortable in the ecosystem.
I still have my old T14g2 running fedora, though (in addition to a plethora of non-mobile systems). Also snagged one of those silly-cheap Acer laptops with a fairly late model i3 in it, because it was $200 and had a SODIMM and m.2 slot, just as a spare/extra (itās running kinoite)
I was using a 2012 "vintage" minitower PC that originally came with Win7 as a crappy little plex/local FTP/Minecraft server, and I had been wanting to try MacOS after not seeing it for a while, so I got a Mac Mini with an M2 in it, and while I've hardly stressed it, it seems really nice. It's small and completely silent, and if I did want to use it more, Apple has certainly tried to keep their walled garden pretty and well-organized.
You might wanna start getting used to pressing command with your thumb, instead of ctrl with your pinkie then:
- Windows: https://gist.github.com/apfelchips/e30321f33abc1eb1a481e83b1e79d5c5/ https://kinto.sh/
- Linux: https://github.com/RedBearAK/toshy?tab=readme-ov-file#-quick-links
Here's my rant about inconsistent keyboard shortcuts on non-macOS systems:
https://mastodon.social/@attero/115771231064736124
I prefer it, however there are apps for Mac to remap it if you like. I use Karabiner to remap my Capslock to Escape. I have Capslock and moving the escape key there is much more ergonomic and where i have it on my custom mechanical keyboards.
Custom keyboard... Install custom firmware dawg
Oh, i do on mine, but can't do that on the built in keyboard in a laptop!
After using Mac I'm never going back to pressing modifiers with the pathetic pinky instead of the strong thumb. It's especially nice with an MS Natural keyboard with its gigantic alt keys, remapped to cmd.
Supposedly some early keyboards had ctrl under the thumb, which is why Emacs employs it quite a bit. I wonder if other apps and systems also had the same logic initially, or borrowed it from Emacs, leading to ctrl being used as the main modifier in Windows and Linux.
Is it? I mean, if I have Linux installed, you know.
Yeah... All the tools in Linux are going to do this weird thing where they expect it to behave like a normal key. So you'd have to do all the hacks mentioned to make it work. For example, GNOME keybind stops detecting the key bind when you release. Etc. Maybe the kernel will accept a ābroken copilot key hackā that implements it but it's not good.
Even with hacks, it still won't work like a modifier like most people use alt/ctrl/win because those rely on knowing the key up to see multiple keys pressed together before release. So... Broken.
Itās much worse than I anticipated! Thanks for explaining! I hope to see as little laptops with the key as possible.
so fucking stupid
Another great product of Free Market Capitalism Ā©
My ThinkPad has one and it is just kinda there... despite it supposedly being remapable since Kernel 6.16 or so I can't get it to properly remap.
I'd love to map it to open LM Studio lol
Everything is remapable if you are good enough at soldering
I was able to remap it with Autohotkey on Windows.
Yeah, I used PowerToys and it's now Right Control again. It was probably easier than finding drivers for Linux.
Note to self: start looking into building my own keyboards if it ever becomes standard, somehow.
It's worth taking a look in the BIOS/ UEFI setup - maybe the key can be remapped there? Once the default F-key behaviour could be defined in there for ThinkPad devices.
Hit f2 or del or whatever the screen tells you during boot to enter the UEFI menu (or hold shift while clicking restart in w11 or w10 to reboot into uefi). Then search for an option to change the buttons behaviour to right ctrl instead of cockpit.
I don't own an ai Thinkpad, sorry.
Smells like antitrust violations.
Didn't KDE say they were working on a way to remap it in a future update?
I remaped it to screenshot on hyprland
But if you slap Linux on it, it just does nothing then or is it mapped as old AltGr or whatever?
Neither, it will be as if you pressed all those keys in the list above, which will most of the time do nothing
Jesus. I guess we're going to have to start figuring out how to reverse engineer our keyboards so we can install QMK on random built-in laptop keyboards and cheap Logitech membrane keyboards to repair the damage Microsoft has done to them.
I'm all for hardware remappable keyboards in laptops too - just like what you can have with an external one. I do realise though that this is a niche within a niche. From what I know only Framework (oh, and System76) is doing something like that.
My laptop had UEFI update that fixed the key-up thing and mentioned it allows holding the key in the changelog. So make sure to check for updates if you care
why even buy that slop of hardware beforehand? if you dont want that feature, you might be happier with another brands laptop
Find me a good recent laptop without a cockpilot key
what are your requirements? i love lenovo although i might change to frameworks or system76
Lenovo has one too...
Framework is a good call but they are unfortunately still not that established and are generally aimed at people who don't like copilot anyway
just point out to microsoft that the icon looks like goatse and they'll remap it like that
IDK I was able to remap it just fine using Power Toys.
In Windows:
PowerToys -> Keyboard Manager -> New Shortcut -> press the Copilot key -> select "Ctrl (right)" from the drop-down. Job done.
Not sure why is it so hard on Linux that it generates such headlines.
this isn't properly remapped and depending on implementation of the key-up events by the keyboard vendor, requires an ugly time delay hack.
qed. https://github.com/Rast1234/copilot_key_on_my_keyboard?tab=readme-ov-file#the-bad
Tell me you haven't tried it without telling me...
It works as a Ctrl key. It just works when remapped via PowerToys. I use it at work practically non-stop for Ctrl+Enter and Ctrl+Backspace.
sure it is! just install Linux. you can remap ever single key.
Not really, it sends a combination of 3 really fast button combination on press and doesn't report to the os when your finger releases the key. You need to run a daemon that detects that specific combination and emulates a finger release after a specified time
Assholes. Couldn't they just remap one of the useless "internet" keys from the 00s like KEY_HOMEPAGE or XF86Mail??
Or create a brand new scancode since they could change the kernel without any problem, especially because the manufacturers would need to change the keyboard firmware anyway AND because copilot requires special hardware, it doesn't need retro compatibility with older windows versions that don't have the scancode in kernel or in the keyboard driver
I have one on my Lenovo IdeaPad I bought a few months ago and am running Mint on. I remapped it to bring up the menu almost immediately. No issues. It acts like a Super key. Maybe this is a model specific thing?
As I read it, you can't use it as modifier as it does not ever release. So bringing up a menu directly works, but copilot+x is troublesome to map