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by whywhywhywhy 1510 days ago
Key shortcut remapping should absolutely be a base feature of every single OS for accessibility reasons.

Back when I used to use Adobe Fireworks there was a shortcut for flattening the current selection, I believe it was cmd+ctrl+shift+Z and I'm pressing this hundreds of times a week and eventually it gave me RSI.

After this happened I remapped it to cmd+F, luckily the app had the ability to do that but honestly I consider it important enough that the OS should provide it. I know a lot of windows users point to AutoHotKey but it's a horrible janky feeling hack and requires you to write actual scripts.

3 comments

Windows has support to remap keys built in, there's just no UI for it oddly. I think it was added in 2000?

https://www.ghacks.net/2010/06/06/the-ultimate-guide-to-keyb...

I have a .reg file that I run on every new install to remap Caps-Lock to Ctrl
In macOS at least you can remap any key as well as keyboard shortcut (both globally and per-app) from the built in OS keyboard preferences. The only thing it requires is that the thing you want to change has a "menu item" (so a named thing in the top menu bar in any of the submenus). Hotkey mapping works by simply mapping to any of the texts in those (sub) menus, however deep you want to go. The great thing about it is the developer of the app doesn't need to do anything to allows that, and it essentially only gets broken if an app goes out of its way to be as non-native as possible (i.e. if it doesn't even use the standard libraries that ship with the OS).
I know and love this feature and have used to to remap many things across my apps.

Just frustrates me other OSes don’t match this bar that I consider the bare minimum.

100%

And it should be a global panel for all installed apps..

With a tab for each app-map, and the ability to export/import a settings file.

It is, minus the built-in import/export (but plists can be copied): https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchlp2262/12....