I’ve got an IBM Model M keyboard and like using it on my PC, but one of its problems is the lack of Windows keys. There’s a bunch of keyboard shortcuts I use almost daily and not having a Windows key makes it annoying. Here’s how I fixed it…
Since the days of Windows 95, Microsoft have released their PowerToys utilities. Things that really should just be in Windows by default, maybe hidden behind an “advanced” button.
One of the features is a keyboard remapper. It very poorly explains what it does by explaining you could remap the “a” key on your keyboard to be the “b” key. Not exactly the most helpful example.
Here’s a better one – it lets you remap your right Alt key to be a Windows key, and unlike all the registry hacks out there to do similar, this works with shortcuts like opening the Snipping Tool and Windows-Tab to switch open windows.
Interestingly you can’t use a remapped key to do Windows-L to lock the screen, and if you do remap a control key, the control key still works with ctrl-alt-del because that’s special.
