[SkeuomorphicBee]

In this kind of discussion people often focus solely on frequent actions, but there is one class of action that should have priority for the limited keys: the infrequent urgent. That is, tasks that don't happen that often, but when they do they are very urgent. For me the best example is the sound volume controls, I don't change sound volume nearly as often as I alternate between apps, but when I need to change the sound volume I need it right now, so that is what I'm using my F-keys for.

[albert_e]

Agreed.

Some keyboard come with dedicated volume +/-/mute keys which is great and frees up function keys.

I have "screenshotting" as a frequent need -- which in some occassions is an urgent one too :)

I use 3 different types of screen capture (current window, select a region, repeat last region) mapped to F6 F7 F8 on all my machines now which gets a lot of use.

[namrog84]

I use sharex and screenshot and region snip a lot. I have it override the screenshot key and then just ctrl and shift for region. Screen. And current windows modifications.

F keys are in my opinion better used elsewhere when you can override screenshot key for screenshots.

I know lots of apps that use those F keys you've overriden.

https://getsharex.com/

[jerf]

That is a fine use, but multimedia keys use 3-7ish (depending on how crazy you go) of the 48-ish function keys readily available. By which I mean, unmodified, SHIFT, CTRL, and ALT, and that's without counting multiple modifiers. I've got volume, mute, pause, fast forward and reverse in there but it's far from the only things I've got. (Well... technically FF, reverse, and pause are WIN-right, WIN-left, and WIN-up respectively, but same principle.) I'm not even close to using up all the function keys.

I've mapped these in something like the last four window managers I use, and they've survived across probably a dozen physical keyboards now. Physical buttons for these things come and go but "WIN-Up" (or Super-Up if you prefer) has always been there.

(I did use a mac with a touch bar for a bit. Was that ever a train wreck for me, as you might expect. Fortunately, people don't seem to be copying them and dumping the function keys. I'm actually perfectly happy with them being a reduced-height bar across the top, as most laptops seem to have now. They don't need to be full height.)

In general, I say to anyone who makes a living on a computer... take control of your keyboard! I don't obsess on not using the mouse at all, but the keyboard can do a lot. There's a lot of keys on there, even ignoring the letter keys (which are densely enough "taken" by a lot of other things I don't tend to override them much).

[0cf8612b2e1e]

>…but multimedia keys use 3-7ish…

Mute is the only one that has real urgency. The others are all second tier.