Powertoys: Feature Request : Keyboard Manager : Remap shortcut to support character keys

[rdhar]

Remap shortcut to support character keys

Feature Request for Keyboard Manager

Context

Hi, only recently came across PowerToys and already fond of the wealth of utilities present. Many thanks for making these available!

Due to limited hand mobility, I’m heavily reliant on key-remapping and macros for keyboard interaction. As such, SharpKeys and AutoHotkey are ideal for remapping keys on a registry-level and scripting complex macros, respectively. I don’t expect Keyboard Manager to have feature parity with either of these dedicated solutions; I’m drawing inspiration from them. For example, AutoHotkey supports mouse input which is super-useful to me (worth raising a different feature request? :).

Summary

As part of Remap shortcuts, I was surprised to find it could only remap to another shortcut starting with a modifier key. What about remapping shortcuts to another key‽ Such as Alt + ? = ‽. Or Alt + Left | Right = ← | →.

Additionally, as per the examples, I don’t even see any way to map to the chosen Unicode characters. Is there any plans to allow inclusion of the wider Unicode characters range?

Thanks for your time, really appreciate it.

[nicolasprigent]

Hi ! I also use a lot Autohotkey for keyboard remapping of special characters. For example, Win + é sends É which is simpler and faster than the default shortcut that is holding Alt while typing 0 then 2 then 0 then 1 !

Having a more user friendly interface for managing shortcuts for special characters would be a great thing, and much more useful than remapping a single key to another key.

I think that for more clarity, "remap a key" and "remap a shortcut" should be melt into the same functionnality called remap keyboard : I would suggest to display remapped keys and shorcuts as a list directly on the Keyboard Manager tab for having a look on all the things configured in a glance. Maybe have the ability to edit directly in the list as it would be done in a video game settings. The last line of the list should start with a + sign to quickly add a shortcut.

[nicolasprigent]

Here is a design of what I think it should look :

[hieroglyphic]

Might be going too far with this

• No separation between single key mapping and multi-key shortcut mapping #4126
• Support mouse input #4250
• Allow arbitrary number of keys per map entry #3936
• Allow mapping to non-keyboard character #3967 #3826 #3947
• Support system button #4198
• Allow remapping by any VK or SC #3846

[saahmedm]

hi @rdhar, thank you for the thoughts and ideas. Since it becomes really hard to track, we stick to one bug / idea / suggestion per issue. In this case, we have a few issues already tracking some of your suggestions as @hieroglyphic mentioned. Also, thank you @nicolasprigent for the design, thats really cool!

shortcut to key: #3290
mouse input: #3690

closing this as a duplicate issue!