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 😆
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.
The open menu key. It’s the one I remap to Compose (for special characters, like Comp±-- to get —).
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
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
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 ‘application’ key.
I used it regularly before I got a keyboard that turned out to have a useless Fn in its place
Today. I don’t like mouse inputs.
TIL I even had an application key there. I don’t think I’ve ever used it.
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. 😁
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. 😃
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, I’m sure) to put it on there.
Theoretically I think they could redefine it as a new distinct key instead of the combo — as is done with the windows and context-menu keys. That would allow it to be remapped properly.
well that’s what they should have done but now what it’s implemented there are a lot more parties that need to come to the table to fix the mess… some hardware might not be able to fix the mess, but i’d 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, you’d hope yes (in which case perhaps there will be firmware hacks) but you can never truly account for the stupidity of hardware companies
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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 they’d kinda be forced to update, assume it’s 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-requirementsSo 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.
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.
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
“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 ‘application key’ 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 ‘windows’ key.
Its not immune from removal via knife
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.
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.
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.
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)
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IT ALSO HAS DEDICATED BUTTONS FOR VOLUME CONTROL
Bro, that’s so cool … your keys have backup’s
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.
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 €1500 MacBooks to €300 laptops.
It’s always this. “This brand new £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 £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 €4400 and it’s used heavily for 8+ hours a day as a development machine. It’s 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 it’ll 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 ~400€, 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+(m1%2Cm2)&_sacat=111422&_sop=13&LH_PrefLoc=3&LH_Sold=1&LH_ItemCondition=1000|2010|1500|2020|2030|2500|3000
- 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? It’s a laptop, a tool, not a religion. I don’t 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.
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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.
A lot of the “different first” has to do with Microsoft patenting UI elements, methodologies and design choices. I’ve never understood why people trash Apple computers so vehemently. They’re a fairly robust software suite targeted at consumers and amateur creatives that’s tailor made to run on the hardware it ships with, if you don’t use those things that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad.
I’ve had laptops from almost every major manufacturer and frankly the MacBooks I’ve 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 I’m lucky, trackpad feels horrible and is inaccurate, can’t 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 it’s placed so far left i think it’s 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 it’s 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 “multi-touch/gesture capable” 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.
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 it’ll fall short on others. It’s 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.
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.
I have an M1 Pro that’s still going strong without issues, even with 8GB RAM. They’re 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 it’s fantastic. Unbelievable battery efficiency, completely silent (passively cooled), and still decently performant for when I want to compile something/do a cpu intensive thing. I’ve used MBPs as corp-issue dev machines for nearly a decade and a half now, so I’m 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 (it’s 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/115771231064736124I 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.
What’s the linux experience like on a mac? Last time I tried to do that the sound didn’t work because Apple hadn’t released the firmware for the speakers
