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 was able to remap it with Autohotkey on Windows.
Its not immune from removal via knife
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.
*Sry for the washed out colors. This was originally an HDR video.Why are you apologizing?
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.
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.
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.
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.
An embarrassing new low, even with the bars they’ve already set. And fitting, for this being the (egregiously multiply-) branded button to launch the shit show. Christ, this has been a fucking carnival lmao.
Microslop has now regressed to implementing “features” very closely resembling - in sophistication and effect - my own bumbling, desperate, ignorant attempts at similar (“making a button behave like a macro”), using AutoHotKey, somewhere between 15-20 years ago.
And do I understand that they both shipped that, on hardware, AND it’s broken so badly it can’t be easily remedied?
I don’t know what to say. It’s like all the geniuses of comedy who died too young are doing this, all of it.
(No shade whatsoever to AHK, it was, probably still is, awesome at its job!)
Edit: suddenly realized it’s just on purpose, probably. Anyway, rant remains lol
Note to self: start looking into building my own keyboards if it ever becomes standard, somehow.
Doesn’t seem to be present on my keyboard. 😁
What’s the keyboard? Always wanted to try an arisu/Alice/derivations.
Netscape Navigator key, 1337 retronaut.
The WHATNOW is impossible to properly remap?
That nuisance you pop off with a flathead screwdriver and throw in the trash can.
I’m all for hardware remappable keyboards in laptops too - just like what you can have with an external one. I do realise though that this is a niche within a niche. From what I know only Framework (oh, and System76) is doing something like that.
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.
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.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!?
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
Congrats Microsoft, you managed to enshittify a goddamn keyboard key.
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)
deleted by creator
Or just glue a new keycap in place
“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.
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.
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.
