Key, in sight – A guide, of sorts, to keyboard customization

Key, in sight

A guide, of sorts, to keyboard customization

I like keyboards because they’re the most effective human-computer interface connection, but I also like keyboards because they are fun.

It’s fun to slam big keys without thinking, and it’s fun to experience the mastery of precise combinations of meticulous keyboard shortcuts. It’s great to see things on the screen that react to what you’ve done, especially if those are things that really understand how you work. And it’s magical to watch your fingers do things seemingly on their own while you’re preoccupied with deeper things, just because you set up something that allowed motor memory to blossom.

This is not only about efficiency. Sometimes it’s more about a connection with the tool, a feeling of customization or control, or simple appreciation of a well-made interaction – all these beautiful low-level moments that give their energy to the whole process.

How do you get there, though? Sure, you can get a nice keyboard, and adopt shortcuts provided by the operating system and the apps you use. After that, however, the road gets pretty steep. Getting a “fancier” keyboard means endless options coated with infinite jargon. On the software front, so many apps come with similar names, confusing interfaces, and frightening dialog boxes asking you for all the permissions in the universe.

So, I wanted to write a little guide, all the way from hardware to software, about how I approached and warmed up to some of the keyboard mastery myself. Maybe it will work for you, too?

My goals for this essay are:

• Actually do some useful things with modern keyboards and keypads.
• Find some fun and enjoyment in it all.
• Be a calm guide through a typically stormy port.

If you were always curious but intimidated, or if you have a keypad or a bunch of extra keys on your keyboard, but don’t know what to do with them… read on. Two caveats before we start:

• This will generally not cover command palettes, text expansion, and using keys to launch apps – those are all valuable, but I think generally not hard to accomplish. I want something different.
• The software parts here are Mac only. Please let me know if you’d like me to cover Windows as well.

How to have fun

How to have fun with hardware

My recommendation: Start with making room for yourself so it’s easy to experiment. In other words, start by adding keys. It’s no fun driving through the busy streets of an old European city, fighting for space with tons of shortcuts already out there, needing to shuffle existing conventions around. I was responsible for keyboard shortcut decisions at work for years, and it’s a real challenge.

Instead – as awful as this analogy is – you need a brand-new parkway autobahn where you’re the only car, free to drive carelessly and without speed limits.

There are two ways to get there: by carving out a not-yet-colonized space on your existing keyboard, or by literally buying new keys.

Adding room by buying new keys

If you have budget for an external macro pad, get one and put it on the side of the main keyboard, opposite the trackpad or mouse.

I have tried a few different options, and I could recommend:

• Wooting UwU gives you three big keys and three small ones; the build quality is nice and the price is relatively low.
• Megadolon Triple Knob Macro Pad is knob-heavy, but it also gives you 16 keys.
• Work Louder Creator series keypads are pricier and have their quirks, but overall it’s a nice layout and the mechanical feel is good, too.
• You can also get any nice numeric keypad, and then reassign its keys to do non-calculatory things. 8BitDo’s is nice and relatively affordable, and Keychron offers a few different keypads – those are a bit more pricey, though. I also used Eweadn NK20.

I would not recommend Stream Deck or its copycats from Ulanzi and Logitech, even if they are conceptually similar to the products above. Those look like keys, but they really are buttons: mushy, meant to be pressed occasionally rather than all the time, not great allies to motor memory. The rule would be: if you’re buying something new, it needs to be using mechanical keyboard switches. We will put those keys to actual pragmatic use, but they also need to be really nice to press for the magic to kick in; we want something good for the brain, but also good for the heart.

If you buy a new macro pad or keypad, it will give you a new set of completely conflict-free keys. My recommendation is to map them to F1–F20 and resolve what that means later in software inside the computer, rather than inside the keyboard itself.

Making room without buying new keys

If you don’t have room, can’t afford a keypad, or have ergonomics or RSI concerns, here are some ideas on how to make room for yourself on your existing keyboard:

• If you have a keyboard with a keypad you don’t use, you can take over those keys to behave like function keys. Particularly both numpad 0 and numpad Return are bigger, and will be enjoyable to press in haste! (Each numpad key can also be modified by modifier keys: Numpad 0, ⌥Numpad 0, and ⌘Numpad 0 can all do different things.)
• If you already have F1–F12 function keys at the top, consider enrolling them in new tasks. If you are already using some of them for system control (for example volume or brightness or music pausing), you can split the function row into two halves and free up only some of it for use. But the goal would be never having to fiddle with the Fn key so the keys are as easy to use as possible.
• You can create a completely new modifier key and assign it to Caps Lock. A user-made modifier is conventionally referred to as “Hyper.” This frees up HyperA–Z, Hyper1–0, even HyperSpace (huh) or HyperEnter to do whatever you want. The key is also in a nice position and really fun to press, once you get past the trauma of years of trying to avoid pressing it.
• Claim a few other keys on the keyboard you never press. Do some eminent domain on the little private Scroll Lock + Print Screen island? Reclaim Insert and Delete or PgUp and PgDn? Or maybe your keyboard has a few weird extra keys that you never touched that could use a new job?
• If you already have a gaming joystick or one of those gaming pads, and you feel good about their feel, they might be a good candidate, too. The tools we’ll talk about will allow to react to joystick and game button equally well as to key presses.

How to have fun with software

You can’t skip this part, and this is unfortunately a harder place to enjoy. With the physical keyboards you can at least be mesmerized by the lights, admire the build quality, enjoy the tacticility. But very little software for keyboard customization is… pleasant. It all comes with rough interfaces, scary permission windows, and impenetrable nomenclature. This can be inspiring in the “I will figure it out and show you who’s the boss” sense – but it will be intimidating first.

You’ll often have to use more than one app to get going, too. Also, both of these things will be true: there is no one app that does everything, and a lot of apps have overlapping functionality.

I will explain software in more details later, but first I just want to show you what I chose to do.

My setup

Here is what specifically worked for me.

Hardware

I know my keyboard looks weird, but stripped of its strange moments, it’s a pretty standard QWERTY.

I have a little numpad on the left side. I customized it via its software so that the keys are mapped to F1–F20. I split the keys into two halves – shortcuts for the system, and shortcuts for the current app – and installed different keycaps that helped me remember that division.

I told the lights to chill and just use a stationary orange color so that it matches my whole theme and makes me happy.

I also have one big arcade button in a big box. It’s a long story, but I commissioned it hoping it’d be fun to press, and guess what