I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode
That's carried over, even with options like one shot mods, & cutting down to under 40 keys (& playing with 28, yesterday received a https://github.com/kilipan/zilpzalp), I still don't find stateful control necessary. More layers, combos, & tap-hold go far
Possibly, depending on how they're activated. If the layer is only activated while another key is pressed, they're not stateful (but then they're no different from yet another Fn key). I'd say that layer toggles and one-shot key modifiers are stateful control, yes.
Personally, I've found that I prefer layer shift keys over layer toggles. It takes more mental effort to track in which layer I'm working than to hold a key while pressing another. The only persistent layer toggles I use is to switch the entire keyset to a different layout (qwerty vs workman vs single-handed, or switch the right half to numpad).
Caps Lock is stateful control. The function of the keys changes depending on the internal state of the system. The "Fn" key on the keyboard in the article is also stateful, and defaults to treating the F row as the special macros, rather than just F1-12.
Emacs key sequences are similarly stateful, and GP may hate that just as much, even if the state is temporary.
For my part, in emacs I would often try ctrl-x-s to save, but miss the x. When I repeat the attempt, emacs register the complete but unknown key sequence ctrl-s-x followed by the start of a new key sequence with ctrl-s. I consider this similarly stateful because the behavior of "ctrl-s" changes entirely depending on what keystroke (if any) preceded it.
I don't like that aspect of emacs, but if you are a heavy-duty editor user it becomes difficult to arrange a consistent set of emacs shortcuts that aren't modal that don't conflict with anything else, because there's so many things you might want to do and so many pre-existing keyboard shortcuts that you can conflict with, not just in emacs but in your window manager. As a simple for-instance, I've got four or five keyboard shortcuts I added in the last year for dealing with the Claude windows in emacs that I've been using (the package defines a couple dozen, it's just about five I use a lot), and I didn't even try to figure out how to make them anything other than "C-c c $something" because it's hard to find somewhere they can go in any sort of pattern that makes any sense and doesn't conflict with anything. Fortunately most Unix window managers seem to leave the Windows key alone, but of course if I try to bring that to Windows it would fail miserably.
I did remap my heaviest hitters a long time ago to single strokes, though. Most notably, start macro, end macro, and replay macro all got coveted non-modal shortcuts.
I mostly agree with GP on stateful controls, but emacs has never clicked for me like vim did. Perhaps it's because switching between modes feels more natural than a simple toggle.
"I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode"
You want some real fun, try the Microsoft Surface keyboard. Maybe they've fixed in a very recent version, but given how long the product line has had this problem, probably not. It has a stateful Fn key. That's right, a Fn key that works like capslock. There is no conceivable way this is a good idea. It means that if you actually want to use both "sides" of the Fn'd keys, you literally can not build muscle memory. If you hold the Fn key and press one of those keys, it'll do the "other" function, but if you just tap the Fn key, including because you had meant to press one of the keys but decided not to halfway through (which happens all the time, you just don't normally notice it because it's a completely normal thing to do that normally carries no consequences), you flip the polarity of the entire Fn key set. Now a normal press and a Fn-press do the opposite things. Until you flip it again.
This is not a "oh, as a multi-decade key user I have opinions about whether key strokes should be 68dB or 72dB" question. This is basic functioning of the keyboard. It's insane.
And, naturally, the key is "magic" and the OS can't see it. While I'm bitching, what is the deal with keyboards on new laptops needing special drivers? What the fuck is so special about your keyboard that you need drivers for it? I'll tell you what's so special about it: stuff you shouldn't be doing anyhow. My OS should be able to see and address all keys so I can remap them as needed. Your stupid special key that does your stupid special thing doesn't need to be a stupid special key. Make it a normal key and trigger your behavior in Windows, not in the hardware. Then I can use your stupid special key at least as a Meta or a Hyper or something. You don't need special drivers to have normal keys, you only need special drivers if you're doing something stupid.
So there's no fixing the Fn key on these systems because it's one of the magic keys that can't be seen by the OS at all, so it can't be remapped, it can't be turned off, it can't be locked into one state, you can't do anything. You're just stuck with a keyboard that, from your brain's point of view, randomly swaps a couple of dozen keys around.
Now I'm also on a programmable keyboard. This guy, to be precise: https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/0a26d32ac1e3b1d2af2896e0... which I split across my chair so I've got one half under each hand when it is resting comfortably. That's something you can't get a laptop keyboard to do.
Speaking of "natural scrolling" it is horrible because most scrolling is downward and "natural" is an ergonomically inferior pushing action instead of pulling.
It's only natural on the actual display itself.
Anothe affront to nature by Apple, along with killing the headphone jack.
On a Macbook, natural scrolling feels right on the touchpad. The real crime is not having a separate setting for a mouse. I had to use applescript tied to a keybind so I can use natural scrolling on the touchpad and toggle to regular scrolling when using a mouse wheel.
Another recommendation is LinearMouse. It lets you fix pretty much every problem that MacOS inflicts on mouse users: pointer acceleration, scroll behavior, click/button behavior. This and Karabiner make the OS much more usable for me.
Check out Scroll Reverser; it's a tiny, open source app that solves exactly this.
There are some other alternatives like BetterTouchTool if you want some other changes like gestures, but as far as this specific problem goes you can just `brew install scroll-reverser`, set up the settings you want and forget about it. Life is too short to deal with this nonsense which is clearly designed to sell the Magic Mouse.
It's not just the ergonomics - in my head I'm moving the cursor (and with it my view) down through the document, not moving the document up. Which is mentally different from a touchscreen, though I expect people who grew up with touchscreens never built that mental association that we're moving the cursor. Fortunately Apple allows be to change it. <end old-man-mode>
For me it's completely different with the same result: I imagine the scroll wheel is on the paper (screen), so my finger going down rolls the wheel and the bottom of the wheel pushes the paper (screen) under it upwards.
For whatever reason this persists to touchpads even though they would seem closer to a touchscreen.
It makes sense on a trackpad too which is what the majority of sold Macs come with. You’re “pushing” the document, not moving the scroll bars. Seems perfectly natural to me. My fingers move up, the document moves up; just like what would happen to a piece of paper being slid up a table.
Yes, it’s less direct than touching the screen, but it makes more sense for the model of UI they’ve been going for over the last 20 years where the content of the window is more meaningful than the window itself, which is to say worrying about where the scroll bars are rather than what part of the document you’re looking at is what’s not natural.
So why doesn't the mouse pointer work that way on an Apple trackpad?
Surely if that's the case then when you move your finger to the upper left then the pointer should move to the bottom right. Because that's how it would work if it was a real object and you were pushing the pointer around with your finger. Why is scrolling a special case?
Honestly though, I wouldn't mind that much if Apple hadn't decided to call it "natural" scrolling, like you're weird if you prefer up for scroll up and down for scroll down. It's both smug and reeks of the same kinda of discriminatory attitude that made life hard for left handers.
The pointer represents your (pointer) finger. Single-finger motions affect the pointer. Scrolling motions affect a representation of the document. When I move my (real) finger up, my (real) finger moves up. When I put my (real) finger on a (real) document and move it up, the paper of the document moves up, causing new text from the bottom to appear in my field of view.
Or scrolling represents a viewpoint, such as a frame, or a finger pointing at the document. Then it's the other way round again. You can't just declare what the metaphor is, it's arbitrary.
Apple's just doing what's on the agenda, plugging the analog hole. Your TV doesn't have a headphone jack any more either. TVs haven't had this in decades.
My TV does have an audio jack. It's a cheap dumb TV. And almost all of my electronic devices have a 3.5 mm jack.
You won't find it in top flagship models, but plenty of budget devices still have it.
Reasonable-sounding arguments always come up in these debates, but in reality it all comes down to what you’re used to.
Disabling natural scrolling used to be the first thing I did on a new system. Until I once was too lazy to do it, got used to it, and now I can’t imagine ever going back.
So I was a Mac user for years and accepted and adapted to natural scrolling after it appeared as the default in 2011. When I switched back to a Windows laptop for work around 2018, I kept it on natural mode.
But then two years ago I got a desktop computer with an external mouse again and.... natural scrolling doesn't work for me on a physical wheel. With a trackpad, the metaphor is direct, that the page or document is being moved by the motion of your fingers; but with a wheel, I still want to pull it toward me to scroll down, because the feels like rolling the little wheel along the document, or turning it to advance the document like a printer finishing a page.
Maybe that's all silly, but for me it's natural scrolling on trackpads and conventional scrolling on mice with scrollwheels.
I think "natural" feels right on a touch pad but, I have a standard/wired KBM setup for working and a wireless keyboard with "touch pad" for sitting on the couch. That "touch pad" registers itself as a "mouse". OSes let you pick different scroll directions for mouse and touch pad, not specific devices. I have to switch manually when it bugs me enough. Just can't win. There is no perfect keyboard. Someone please prove me wrong.
One of my favorite things about my custom mechanical keyboard, is being able to remap the entire key set in the firmware with VIA. I have fn+arrow keys for media, fn+space for play/pause fn+end for calculator, and a bunch of random others. It is so useful I could never get another keyboard that doesn’t have a similar functionality.
> It is so useful I could never get another keyboard that doesn’t have a similar functionality.
I do it at the software level (Linux / Xorg): complete remapping, with an "hyper" key modifier etc.
The reason I do it at the software level is that you can pry my Topre switches from my cold dead hands and the HHKB Pro JP I'm using doesn't have, by default, a programmable controller. Now I know some people mod their Topre keyboards to add a programmable controller but I never got to that point.
Doing so in hardware using .xkb files is... Something. I know way more about .xkb files than I should but, thankfully, so far I've just been able to brink my .xkb file to every new Linux version (supporting Xorg, I'm not on Wayland).
I take at some point I'll look more into how to mod my HHKB keyboards with programmable controller.
Thinkpad laptops thankfully have a BIOS option to revert the behaviour to normal, where F1-F12 perform their nominal functions. I'd probably pay an extra €50 for a laptop that didn't come with a stupid Fn button at all. Might want to throw some more money at a few more keyboard modifications: my bottom row is Fn CTRL Win Alt Space AltGr PrtSc Ctrl; that PrtSc button clearly has no business being there. Arrows & PgUp/PgDown are too small. Backspace is too short. Etc.
Thinkpad laptops thankfully have the option to switch Fn and Ctrl Key in the bios, because that Fn in the bottem left is reserved by my muscle memory to ctrl and I won't change that.
They switched the Ctrl/Fn position a year or two ago so people like you would stop complaining. Of course this means that instead you have anybody who's used a thinkpad in the last 30 years complaining about the switch. It's a little better now because they made the keys the same size, so after you switch them in the BIOS you can physically switch the keycaps around.
Yes, normally a BIOS setting on laptops I think. Before changing it I was hitting sleep constantly since they'd put it on F1, jammed up next to escape.
You need Fn anyway because even 16" now come without a navigation block and even if you have it (asus tm420 though they ditched that too) you have no way to make PrtScr, Break, ScrollLock.
The real atrocity is placing it on the left side when 90% of the most used combos are on the right eg Fn+arrows for paging and home/end.
It could be way better if Fn was on the place of ContextMenu - Thinkpad already used it for the stupid PrtScr and now even more stupid Copilot key.
You can configure whether you prefer the standard behavior or to use the actions assigned to the F keys by default, I think in the BIOS, and then you can use fn lock to switch at runtime. That's nice in itself but that's not all.
In the latter mode, holding a modifier key like Alt makes the F key act standard, so Alt+F4 works in any mode as expected.
Traditional keyboards are dead to me, get something programmable with zmk or qmk and a bunch of extra thumb buttons so they can do something more than just the spacebar. I have ctrl and alt in the outer column inline with letters so they're super easy to press without reaching, and shift, return, backspace on thumbs as well as layer switch for function keys, symbols, numpad, and arrows all accessible from the home position. Bonus points for split too so your wrists aren't at a weird angle.
Missing the zeroth option in the "doing Fn right" suggestion list: don't use Fn.
I have a keyboard here with a handful of extra keys at the top which do all these functions that the author is showing as Fn functions on their keyboard. Isn't that simply the right option?
Also on laptops: yes, I want to change the brightness regularly, but also I use the function keys in applications that support them. There's already like 100 keys on there! How much do the extra ones cost? I don't buy the cheapest laptops anyway, I'll buy what I think will work the best. No manufacturer offers this option though. Even Framework has only half-height escape and function keys shared with Fn triggers :(
Something that I'm missing from both the article and the comments - I would remap the sleep button to F4 at OS level. Repeat analogous steps for other keys.
Granted, you'll lose these functions, and likely switching to another keyboard will drive you mad, but I guess this is a good stopgap software based solution.
Thanks for the idea! Now I'm going to mash the Fn key whenever I feel the urge to strongly emphasize something but can't actually type it out because, well, it would be Fn NSFW.
Instead of using a single menu bar icon “volume control,” I have transferred the lessons of the keyboard to the GUI and placed two buttons in my menu bar: volume down and volume up. I have been using them all the time for about half a year now.
The benefits of this approach, to my knowledge and estimation, include: no waiting for a slider to appear; no nested actions; no need to read the current value; each click does not depend on the current state; Fitts’ Law muscle memory boost (the buttons are effectively infinite-height targets); discoverability compared to scrollwheelable icons.
> It was nice that they gave dedicated keys to volume control/toggling muting.
I know it's not an option for certain keyboards (and laptop keyboards) but I appreciated not having to use Fn keys and use physical volume dials like Das Keyboard 4. https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-professional
The Das keyboard commits the sin of having a sleep button (why is it even on the keyboard??) right next to the media controls. I've accidentally hit that multiple times when trying to change my music.
I know laptops have a bit of a different standard, but for real keyboards, IBM perfected keyboard design in 1985 and all deviations from that are a mistake.
I have a mechanical keyboard also and like tactile feedback. But I think what we really want is just a touch screen with some kind of next level programmable haptics. Then we can have whatever keys we want
Products like Tactus or Tanvas were going in the right direction.
Only tangentially related, but I've found myself down a rabbit hole with some ancient BigKeys keyboards (designed/manufactured by Greystone Digital), and a small handful of them have a physical switch on their underside that switches them between QWERTY and ASDF layout; it's genuinely perplexing because the code theyre running on the boards is not at all standard PS/2 or USB (save a few later revisions/models). There is a DFK48 V1.2 (mfg 1994) that I have been fighting with for some time now, and it angers me to no end.
The lengths that peripheral manufacturers will go to to create "functionality" is wild, having looked at hardware like this for the first time. Granted, I'm working with what is widely considered an accessibility HID, the fact that "stickey keys" (as theyre known in Windows) is a default function of this keyboard, which breaks all common passive PS/2 -> USB adapters due to encoding differences, significantly fucks up my workflow in using it with modern hardware by using unique encodings AFAICT. It's a wonderful puzzle, but an annoyance for someone trying to accomplish anything.
I'm confident this shit could be oneshot with LLMs, but that's not the point of the work, in case anyone was considering chiming in about them.
Part of me needs to realize that this was made 30+ years ago, before we knew what we now know. But another part of me feels intense animosity for such early, unabashed, and shameless abandon in regards to HID standards/protocols. Using what is effectively Stickey Keys by default and breaking PS/2 -> USB adaptability because of that is annoying as hell, even if the thing is $50 on ebay.
At least your keyboard has a Fn lock shortcut. Mine doesn't, so I'm stuck either taping down the Fn key or living in constant fear of accidentally sleeping my PC. Real first world problems but still
The F1-F12 keys have always felt like one of those things where… it’s like, people who enjoy oldschool interfaces seem very attached to. And I love the terminal, so I feel like I ought to have strong opinions in their favor.
But the only time I need to use them is… what is it, ctrl-alt-F3 to switch to a console if my window manager has fallen apart. This is a very rare event, so I can’t find any strong feeling here.
What do people use these keys for? The volume/brightness keys seem much more useful. Maybe I’ll map the corresponding F-keys to brightness as well, so I can just never care about Fn.
In addition to sibling replies, function keys are very useful in debuggers (to step in/over, set breakpoints, ...). And lots of other things that don't immediately come to mind.
I'm old enough to remember WordPerfect on DOS, with a paper template to put over the function keys on your keyboard as a little cheat sheet for all their functions.
Yeah, when I’ve had to break down and reach for a debugger, it was gdb. I’m sure there are shortcuts but since it was a rare event, I just typed “step” and “continue” like a caveman, haha.
Games often bind skills or other game mechanics to the function keys.
Anecdotally, I switched from `ctrl+shift+i` to F12 for opening the web inspector due to many websites capturing that keybinding for their own purpose (claude and code editors) if I didn't have a function row I'd have to find an even more arcane hotkey.
They're just a nice set of purpose-undefined keys that you or the application can bind to useful functions.
Alt-F4 is the canonical shortcut for closing a window
F2 is the canonical key for renaming
F5 is refresh
F11 is fullscreen
F1 is for help but admittedly I don't use that a lot
I can't think of a very frequent, standard use for the other keys. So I can't really disagree with having so many F keys being kinda unnecessary. But I'm happy to have them and they never bothered me.
When you have decades of experience with an operating system and/or applications historically respecting keyboard workflows you'll develop strong opinions. You will have an extreme reaction when hardware and software disrespect your investment in your muscle memory.
The shortcut for toggling fullscreen in Firefox is F11.
Many default shortcuts in JetBrains IDEs also use function keys. The keymap can be changed, of course, so you can design your own keymap to avoid F keys, but that's still a bit of a chore.
Same on a Mac: I've never used a function key in the last … 15 years or so? Where the author uses Alt-F4, I use ⌘W. I didn't even hate the Touch Bar (but not exactly used it either.)
VSCode binds a lot of basic commands to function keys, so I'm always doing Fn-F12. That seems like a weird choice, and if it really bothered me, I could remap it, but so far I haven't.
Your guess is right. My patience for spreadsheets runs out (and I switch to Python or something) before I hit a problem complex enough that effectiveness matters.
We had keyboards like this in several labs in the uni! Except they were even worse, and these three keys were shaped like regular keys. When I accidentally powered down my PC the third time in a row, losing all progress on my assignment, I popped the key out of the keyboard.
The article doesn't even touch on the fact that on these types of keyboards, the F-keys often have bastardized keycaps rather than the regular profile. For example on the Microsoft keyboard example, they're much smaller and probably have crappier travel.
The fundamental problems here are the product design pushes to make everything smaller and also to add gimmicky features that seem like they'd be useful but with the constraints just end up taking something else away - note that the examples of good keyboards are made from standard full size keycaps. The rise of bespoke keyboard designers that using off the shelf switches/keycaps is a constraint that pushes away the other two trends.
I'd think you can get mechanical keyboards with reasonable wireless functionality these days. If the range isn't long enough, run an active USB extension cord around the room and put the receiver under your couch. Laptops are of course the age-old space where keyboards are scrutinized to death.
I hate laptops now shipping with the Office 365 logo. Apparently the Windows logo wasn't enough. How many more Microsoft symbols will keep polluting keyboards?
I hate the missing home/end/pgup/pgdn keys more (which is the case on basically all laptops, and you obviously can't just buy a different keyboard for a laptop).
I have a bin full of pristine keyboards that never see the light of day because of Fn, arrows, Home, and/or End placement.
I used to work on 3 different laptops, so I kind of got used to thinking about every stroke using those keys, but I never want to go back there, it's so mentally taxing.
I find the "wrong" FN keyboards annoying like OP, but the Home/End to Pgup/Dn grouping of keys is what really makes or breaks a great keyboard layout for me.
The caps lock key is good for binding to F13 and using for push-to-talk. I know some people bind it to escape for Vim usage but I don't like that because I'm likely to also use Vim on machines without that key remapped and that messes with muscle memory.
Yes, of course. Because I programmed my Keychron for it to be a regular LShift. Works very good for my hands. But when I'm on the regular keyboard I have a real trouble with typing or entering passwords, but it's manageable.
> Cant remember using a function key
I use it for the volume control when I'm in a fullscreen app or with both hands on the keyboard - but only because my Fn is on the right and volume controls on F10-F12.
I definitely hate the G-keys on a Logitech G915 more though.
It's a perfectly good full size mechanical keyboard with low travel...and a row of keys on the left hand side which obliterates the typing ergonomics of it.
Meanwhile they stopped making the K740 which is basically the perfect keyboard (which I am now typing on after buying a replacement key - the Cherry Stream is good but man....this still just feels better overall - the key layout is just subtly right).
Meanwhile whoever at Lenovo thought to the put the function modifier key on the left outermost side, rather then Ctrl, has commited a serious crime against ergonomics.
I'm pretty sure I'm the first that upvoted it, when it was #2 on the "new" page, like 3 minutes ago. I was very surprised to see it here when I went back to the main page. I'm sure the topic hits a lot of nerves :)
I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options (https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods just covers home row mods)
I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode
That's carried over, even with options like one shot mods, & cutting down to under 40 keys (& playing with 28, yesterday received a https://github.com/kilipan/zilpzalp), I still don't find stateful control necessary. More layers, combos, & tap-hold go far
> I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options
The best part of these kinds of keyboards is they provide each thumb two keys each.
That allows for the keyboards to be much more expressive, as well as not needing the pinky for keys like backspace/enter/esc.
Aren't layers a form of stateful control?
Possibly, depending on how they're activated. If the layer is only activated while another key is pressed, they're not stateful (but then they're no different from yet another Fn key). I'd say that layer toggles and one-shot key modifiers are stateful control, yes.
Personally, I've found that I prefer layer shift keys over layer toggles. It takes more mental effort to track in which layer I'm working than to hold a key while pressing another. The only persistent layer toggles I use is to switch the entire keyset to a different layout (qwerty vs workman vs single-handed, or switch the right half to numpad).
Caps Lock is stateful control. The function of the keys changes depending on the internal state of the system. The "Fn" key on the keyboard in the article is also stateful, and defaults to treating the F row as the special macros, rather than just F1-12.
Keyboard layers work more like the Shift key.
Sort of.
The downside from the 'state' from Caps Lock is you have to keep track of whether it's active or not.
Whereas with layers, typically a layer will only be active if you're holding down some kind of "activate layer" key.
You sound like you would prefer Emacs over Vim.
Emacs key sequences are similarly stateful, and GP may hate that just as much, even if the state is temporary.
For my part, in emacs I would often try ctrl-x-s to save, but miss the x. When I repeat the attempt, emacs register the complete but unknown key sequence ctrl-s-x followed by the start of a new key sequence with ctrl-s. I consider this similarly stateful because the behavior of "ctrl-s" changes entirely depending on what keystroke (if any) preceded it.
I don't like that aspect of emacs, but if you are a heavy-duty editor user it becomes difficult to arrange a consistent set of emacs shortcuts that aren't modal that don't conflict with anything else, because there's so many things you might want to do and so many pre-existing keyboard shortcuts that you can conflict with, not just in emacs but in your window manager. As a simple for-instance, I've got four or five keyboard shortcuts I added in the last year for dealing with the Claude windows in emacs that I've been using (the package defines a couple dozen, it's just about five I use a lot), and I didn't even try to figure out how to make them anything other than "C-c c $something" because it's hard to find somewhere they can go in any sort of pattern that makes any sense and doesn't conflict with anything. Fortunately most Unix window managers seem to leave the Windows key alone, but of course if I try to bring that to Windows it would fail miserably.
I did remap my heaviest hitters a long time ago to single strokes, though. Most notably, start macro, end macro, and replay macro all got coveted non-modal shortcuts.
I mostly agree with GP on stateful controls, but emacs has never clicked for me like vim did. Perhaps it's because switching between modes feels more natural than a simple toggle.
I have the same feeling and I use evil-mode in Emacs because of that. It's basically Vim inside of Emacs.
"I've always hated stateful control. Always ripped out caps lock key from my boards (or later figured out remapping), same for insert mode"
You want some real fun, try the Microsoft Surface keyboard. Maybe they've fixed in a very recent version, but given how long the product line has had this problem, probably not. It has a stateful Fn key. That's right, a Fn key that works like capslock. There is no conceivable way this is a good idea. It means that if you actually want to use both "sides" of the Fn'd keys, you literally can not build muscle memory. If you hold the Fn key and press one of those keys, it'll do the "other" function, but if you just tap the Fn key, including because you had meant to press one of the keys but decided not to halfway through (which happens all the time, you just don't normally notice it because it's a completely normal thing to do that normally carries no consequences), you flip the polarity of the entire Fn key set. Now a normal press and a Fn-press do the opposite things. Until you flip it again.
This is not a "oh, as a multi-decade key user I have opinions about whether key strokes should be 68dB or 72dB" question. This is basic functioning of the keyboard. It's insane.
And, naturally, the key is "magic" and the OS can't see it. While I'm bitching, what is the deal with keyboards on new laptops needing special drivers? What the fuck is so special about your keyboard that you need drivers for it? I'll tell you what's so special about it: stuff you shouldn't be doing anyhow. My OS should be able to see and address all keys so I can remap them as needed. Your stupid special key that does your stupid special thing doesn't need to be a stupid special key. Make it a normal key and trigger your behavior in Windows, not in the hardware. Then I can use your stupid special key at least as a Meta or a Hyper or something. You don't need special drivers to have normal keys, you only need special drivers if you're doing something stupid.
So there's no fixing the Fn key on these systems because it's one of the magic keys that can't be seen by the OS at all, so it can't be remapped, it can't be turned off, it can't be locked into one state, you can't do anything. You're just stuck with a keyboard that, from your brain's point of view, randomly swaps a couple of dozen keys around.
Now I'm also on a programmable keyboard. This guy, to be precise: https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/0a26d32ac1e3b1d2af2896e0... which I split across my chair so I've got one half under each hand when it is resting comfortably. That's something you can't get a laptop keyboard to do.
Speaking of "natural scrolling" it is horrible because most scrolling is downward and "natural" is an ergonomically inferior pushing action instead of pulling.
It's only natural on the actual display itself.
Anothe affront to nature by Apple, along with killing the headphone jack.
On a Macbook, natural scrolling feels right on the touchpad. The real crime is not having a separate setting for a mouse. I had to use applescript tied to a keybind so I can use natural scrolling on the touchpad and toggle to regular scrolling when using a mouse wheel.
Another recommendation is LinearMouse. It lets you fix pretty much every problem that MacOS inflicts on mouse users: pointer acceleration, scroll behavior, click/button behavior. This and Karabiner make the OS much more usable for me.
Check out Scroll Reverser; it's a tiny, open source app that solves exactly this.
There are some other alternatives like BetterTouchTool if you want some other changes like gestures, but as far as this specific problem goes you can just `brew install scroll-reverser`, set up the settings you want and forget about it. Life is too short to deal with this nonsense which is clearly designed to sell the Magic Mouse.
https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
It's not just the ergonomics - in my head I'm moving the cursor (and with it my view) down through the document, not moving the document up. Which is mentally different from a touchscreen, though I expect people who grew up with touchscreens never built that mental association that we're moving the cursor. Fortunately Apple allows be to change it. <end old-man-mode>
I always viewed the classic scroll method as a mirror to what happens on screen.
For me it's completely different with the same result: I imagine the scroll wheel is on the paper (screen), so my finger going down rolls the wheel and the bottom of the wheel pushes the paper (screen) under it upwards.
For whatever reason this persists to touchpads even though they would seem closer to a touchscreen.
It makes sense on a trackpad too which is what the majority of sold Macs come with. You’re “pushing” the document, not moving the scroll bars. Seems perfectly natural to me. My fingers move up, the document moves up; just like what would happen to a piece of paper being slid up a table.
Yes, it’s less direct than touching the screen, but it makes more sense for the model of UI they’ve been going for over the last 20 years where the content of the window is more meaningful than the window itself, which is to say worrying about where the scroll bars are rather than what part of the document you’re looking at is what’s not natural.
It's the ergonomics that I have an issue with.
So why doesn't the mouse pointer work that way on an Apple trackpad?
Surely if that's the case then when you move your finger to the upper left then the pointer should move to the bottom right. Because that's how it would work if it was a real object and you were pushing the pointer around with your finger. Why is scrolling a special case?
Honestly though, I wouldn't mind that much if Apple hadn't decided to call it "natural" scrolling, like you're weird if you prefer up for scroll up and down for scroll down. It's both smug and reeks of the same kinda of discriminatory attitude that made life hard for left handers.
The pointer represents your (pointer) finger. Single-finger motions affect the pointer. Scrolling motions affect a representation of the document. When I move my (real) finger up, my (real) finger moves up. When I put my (real) finger on a (real) document and move it up, the paper of the document moves up, causing new text from the bottom to appear in my field of view.
Or scrolling represents a viewpoint, such as a frame, or a finger pointing at the document. Then it's the other way round again. You can't just declare what the metaphor is, it's arbitrary.
On any non-apple system it has the "natural" scroll on the touchpad AND sane scrolling behavior.
Apple's just doing what's on the agenda, plugging the analog hole. Your TV doesn't have a headphone jack any more either. TVs haven't had this in decades.
My TV does have an audio jack. It's a cheap dumb TV. And almost all of my electronic devices have a 3.5 mm jack. You won't find it in top flagship models, but plenty of budget devices still have it.
I don't know what the line is for "flagship" is, but my $2k 4k smart TV (which isn't connected to the internet) also has a 1/8" jack.
I don't think I've ever owned any headphones with a long enough cable to plug into my tv when I'm sitting at a comfortable viewing position
Thankfully, you can buy a cable extender for like $2, because it's a standard that has been around for 150 years.
Example: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=648
Just be aware of your surroundings if you do this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=APJhnjaHql0
Reasonable-sounding arguments always come up in these debates, but in reality it all comes down to what you’re used to.
Disabling natural scrolling used to be the first thing I did on a new system. Until I once was too lazy to do it, got used to it, and now I can’t imagine ever going back.
So I was a Mac user for years and accepted and adapted to natural scrolling after it appeared as the default in 2011. When I switched back to a Windows laptop for work around 2018, I kept it on natural mode.
But then two years ago I got a desktop computer with an external mouse again and.... natural scrolling doesn't work for me on a physical wheel. With a trackpad, the metaphor is direct, that the page or document is being moved by the motion of your fingers; but with a wheel, I still want to pull it toward me to scroll down, because the feels like rolling the little wheel along the document, or turning it to advance the document like a printer finishing a page.
Maybe that's all silly, but for me it's natural scrolling on trackpads and conventional scrolling on mice with scrollwheels.
That's the sane handling of scrolling. macOS is weird for tying the scrolling direction of trackpads and mouse wheels in a single setting.
> Maybe that's all silly
No it isn't.
Both examples match perfectly physically:
- Touchpad is like dragging the piece of paper directly.
- Scroll wheel is like having the paper on the other side of the wheel.
I think "natural" feels right on a touch pad but, I have a standard/wired KBM setup for working and a wireless keyboard with "touch pad" for sitting on the couch. That "touch pad" registers itself as a "mouse". OSes let you pick different scroll directions for mouse and touch pad, not specific devices. I have to switch manually when it bugs me enough. Just can't win. There is no perfect keyboard. Someone please prove me wrong.
One of my favorite things about my custom mechanical keyboard, is being able to remap the entire key set in the firmware with VIA. I have fn+arrow keys for media, fn+space for play/pause fn+end for calculator, and a bunch of random others. It is so useful I could never get another keyboard that doesn’t have a similar functionality.
> It is so useful I could never get another keyboard that doesn’t have a similar functionality.
I do it at the software level (Linux / Xorg): complete remapping, with an "hyper" key modifier etc.
The reason I do it at the software level is that you can pry my Topre switches from my cold dead hands and the HHKB Pro JP I'm using doesn't have, by default, a programmable controller. Now I know some people mod their Topre keyboards to add a programmable controller but I never got to that point.
Doing so in hardware using .xkb files is... Something. I know way more about .xkb files than I should but, thankfully, so far I've just been able to brink my .xkb file to every new Linux version (supporting Xorg, I'm not on Wayland).
I take at some point I'll look more into how to mod my HHKB keyboards with programmable controller.
Thinkpad laptops thankfully have a BIOS option to revert the behaviour to normal, where F1-F12 perform their nominal functions. I'd probably pay an extra €50 for a laptop that didn't come with a stupid Fn button at all. Might want to throw some more money at a few more keyboard modifications: my bottom row is Fn CTRL Win Alt Space AltGr PrtSc Ctrl; that PrtSc button clearly has no business being there. Arrows & PgUp/PgDown are too small. Backspace is too short. Etc.
Thinkpad laptops thankfully have the option to switch Fn and Ctrl Key in the bios, because that Fn in the bottem left is reserved by my muscle memory to ctrl and I won't change that.
They switched the Ctrl/Fn position a year or two ago so people like you would stop complaining. Of course this means that instead you have anybody who's used a thinkpad in the last 30 years complaining about the switch. It's a little better now because they made the keys the same size, so after you switch them in the BIOS you can physically switch the keycaps around.
Yes, normally a BIOS setting on laptops I think. Before changing it I was hitting sleep constantly since they'd put it on F1, jammed up next to escape.
You need Fn anyway because even 16" now come without a navigation block and even if you have it (asus tm420 though they ditched that too) you have no way to make PrtScr, Break, ScrollLock.
The real atrocity is placing it on the left side when 90% of the most used combos are on the right eg Fn+arrows for paging and home/end.
It could be way better if Fn was on the place of ContextMenu - Thinkpad already used it for the stupid PrtScr and now even more stupid Copilot key.
The HP Elitebook laptops get this right.
You can configure whether you prefer the standard behavior or to use the actions assigned to the F keys by default, I think in the BIOS, and then you can use fn lock to switch at runtime. That's nice in itself but that's not all.
In the latter mode, holding a modifier key like Alt makes the F key act standard, so Alt+F4 works in any mode as expected.
Traditional keyboards are dead to me, get something programmable with zmk or qmk and a bunch of extra thumb buttons so they can do something more than just the spacebar. I have ctrl and alt in the outer column inline with letters so they're super easy to press without reaching, and shift, return, backspace on thumbs as well as layer switch for function keys, symbols, numpad, and arrows all accessible from the home position. Bonus points for split too so your wrists aren't at a weird angle.
Missing the zeroth option in the "doing Fn right" suggestion list: don't use Fn.
I have a keyboard here with a handful of extra keys at the top which do all these functions that the author is showing as Fn functions on their keyboard. Isn't that simply the right option?
Also on laptops: yes, I want to change the brightness regularly, but also I use the function keys in applications that support them. There's already like 100 keys on there! How much do the extra ones cost? I don't buy the cheapest laptops anyway, I'll buy what I think will work the best. No manufacturer offers this option though. Even Framework has only half-height escape and function keys shared with Fn triggers :(
Something that I'm missing from both the article and the comments - I would remap the sleep button to F4 at OS level. Repeat analogous steps for other keys.
Granted, you'll lose these functions, and likely switching to another keyboard will drive you mad, but I guess this is a good stopgap software based solution.
Another option (he's using Windows) is "change what the power buttons do" in Control Panel to make the sleep button into a no-op.
A missed opportunity to say you 'Fn' hate the Fn key :)
Thanks for the idea! Now I'm going to mash the Fn key whenever I feel the urge to strongly emphasize something but can't actually type it out because, well, it would be Fn NSFW.
Instead of using a single menu bar icon “volume control,” I have transferred the lessons of the keyboard to the GUI and placed two buttons in my menu bar: volume down and volume up. I have been using them all the time for about half a year now.
The benefits of this approach, to my knowledge and estimation, include: no waiting for a slider to appear; no nested actions; no need to read the current value; each click does not depend on the current state; Fitts’ Law muscle memory boost (the buttons are effectively infinite-height targets); discoverability compared to scrollwheelable icons.
> It was nice that they gave dedicated keys to volume control/toggling muting.
I know it's not an option for certain keyboards (and laptop keyboards) but I appreciated not having to use Fn keys and use physical volume dials like Das Keyboard 4. https://www.daskeyboard.com/daskeyboard-4-professional
The Das keyboard commits the sin of having a sleep button (why is it even on the keyboard??) right next to the media controls. I've accidentally hit that multiple times when trying to change my music.
Try borrowing my laptop, it has the power button right next to Delete. You never know what exactly is going to be deleted!
Hah, my work-issued laptop has that one as well. Power button should never be inline with normal keys, IMO.
I know laptops have a bit of a different standard, but for real keyboards, IBM perfected keyboard design in 1985 and all deviations from that are a mistake.
I have a mechanical keyboard also and like tactile feedback. But I think what we really want is just a touch screen with some kind of next level programmable haptics. Then we can have whatever keys we want
Products like Tactus or Tanvas were going in the right direction.
The real culprit is having the awkward alt+F4 used for closing an application instead of cmd+W or cmd+Q on macOS for example.
Some models do have physical switches on the back witj which you can enable / disable this behaviour.
One of the many cases where physical buttons/switches are superior to software-only options.
Only tangentially related, but I've found myself down a rabbit hole with some ancient BigKeys keyboards (designed/manufactured by Greystone Digital), and a small handful of them have a physical switch on their underside that switches them between QWERTY and ASDF layout; it's genuinely perplexing because the code theyre running on the boards is not at all standard PS/2 or USB (save a few later revisions/models). There is a DFK48 V1.2 (mfg 1994) that I have been fighting with for some time now, and it angers me to no end.
The lengths that peripheral manufacturers will go to to create "functionality" is wild, having looked at hardware like this for the first time. Granted, I'm working with what is widely considered an accessibility HID, the fact that "stickey keys" (as theyre known in Windows) is a default function of this keyboard, which breaks all common passive PS/2 -> USB adapters due to encoding differences, significantly fucks up my workflow in using it with modern hardware by using unique encodings AFAICT. It's a wonderful puzzle, but an annoyance for someone trying to accomplish anything.
I'm confident this shit could be oneshot with LLMs, but that's not the point of the work, in case anyone was considering chiming in about them.
Part of me needs to realize that this was made 30+ years ago, before we knew what we now know. But another part of me feels intense animosity for such early, unabashed, and shameless abandon in regards to HID standards/protocols. Using what is effectively Stickey Keys by default and breaking PS/2 -> USB adaptability because of that is annoying as hell, even if the thing is $50 on ebay.
At least your keyboard has a Fn lock shortcut. Mine doesn't, so I'm stuck either taping down the Fn key or living in constant fear of accidentally sleeping my PC. Real first world problems but still
The F1-F12 keys have always felt like one of those things where… it’s like, people who enjoy oldschool interfaces seem very attached to. And I love the terminal, so I feel like I ought to have strong opinions in their favor.
But the only time I need to use them is… what is it, ctrl-alt-F3 to switch to a console if my window manager has fallen apart. This is a very rare event, so I can’t find any strong feeling here.
What do people use these keys for? The volume/brightness keys seem much more useful. Maybe I’ll map the corresponding F-keys to brightness as well, so I can just never care about Fn.
In addition to sibling replies, function keys are very useful in debuggers (to step in/over, set breakpoints, ...). And lots of other things that don't immediately come to mind.
I'm old enough to remember WordPerfect on DOS, with a paper template to put over the function keys on your keyboard as a little cheat sheet for all their functions.
Yeah, when I’ve had to break down and reach for a debugger, it was gdb. I’m sure there are shortcuts but since it was a rare event, I just typed “step” and “continue” like a caveman, haha.
Games often bind skills or other game mechanics to the function keys.
Anecdotally, I switched from `ctrl+shift+i` to F12 for opening the web inspector due to many websites capturing that keybinding for their own purpose (claude and code editors) if I didn't have a function row I'd have to find an even more arcane hotkey.
They're just a nice set of purpose-undefined keys that you or the application can bind to useful functions.
I've played a lot of games and other than quick save, can't think of any that have used the F-row.
Pretty much required in Eve Online.
Alt-F4 is the canonical shortcut for closing a window
F2 is the canonical key for renaming
F5 is refresh
F11 is fullscreen
F1 is for help but admittedly I don't use that a lot
I can't think of a very frequent, standard use for the other keys. So I can't really disagree with having so many F keys being kinda unnecessary. But I'm happy to have them and they never bothered me.
depends on artillery.. i mean canon:
F5 is for save game
F9 is load :)
When you have decades of experience with an operating system and/or applications historically respecting keyboard workflows you'll develop strong opinions. You will have an extreme reaction when hardware and software disrespect your investment in your muscle memory.
Shortcuts, mostly.
The shortcut for toggling fullscreen in Firefox is F11.
Many default shortcuts in JetBrains IDEs also use function keys. The keymap can be changed, of course, so you can design your own keymap to avoid F keys, but that's still a bit of a chore.
Same on a Mac: I've never used a function key in the last … 15 years or so? Where the author uses Alt-F4, I use ⌘W. I didn't even hate the Touch Bar (but not exactly used it either.)
VSCode binds a lot of basic commands to function keys, so I'm always doing Fn-F12. That seems like a weird choice, and if it really bothered me, I could remap it, but so far I haven't.
VSCode is a Microsoft product (as is Excel, mentioned elsewhere) and Microsoft products work best on Microsoft platforms.
Mac is not a Microsoft platform though.
I guess you never use Excel, or never learned to use it effectively.
Your guess is right. My patience for spreadsheets runs out (and I switch to Python or something) before I hit a problem complex enough that effectiveness matters.
On macOS, I use a free app called Fluor, that lets me auto switch the Fn key behavior based on which app is active.
I have had it with these mother Fn keys on this mother Fn keyboard!!
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad - An advanced keyboard manager
enjoy
The builtin keyboard on Asus StudioBook laptops also gets this right.
When holding Alt, the F4 key always acts as that rather than its special action (backlight brightness down).
Talking the "Sleep" button...
Back in 2000s, there were some popular cheap external keyboards with three extra buttons between the delete/end/pgdown row, and the arrows.
The first of those buttons was "power off" sitting just below "Delete".
Example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hendry/330827330
It was pure madness because it was guaranteed to push this button by accident on a daily basis.
I can't imagine someone using computers for more than 5 minutes could have designed this.
We had keyboards like this in several labs in the uni! Except they were even worse, and these three keys were shaped like regular keys. When I accidentally powered down my PC the third time in a row, losing all progress on my assignment, I popped the key out of the keyboard.
when i was a teen the "sleep" button was just right of the enter key so if you slipped, which i often did, night night computer.
I didn’t know how many keys I didn’t need until I switched to a 50% ortholinear, and I would dare to say even a 40% should be enough for most people.
Just get a keyboard that supports custom firmware and go wild with it. You can do whatever you want.
Ah WASD keyboards :(. Does anyone by chance have the manuals for the v1 and or v3 coding keyboards from them?
For any lenovo enjoyers, know that you can swap Fn and Ctrl in the bios options.
My Framework 13 also has this option for some reason, even though my ctrl key is on the outside
The article doesn't even touch on the fact that on these types of keyboards, the F-keys often have bastardized keycaps rather than the regular profile. For example on the Microsoft keyboard example, they're much smaller and probably have crappier travel.
The fundamental problems here are the product design pushes to make everything smaller and also to add gimmicky features that seem like they'd be useful but with the constraints just end up taking something else away - note that the examples of good keyboards are made from standard full size keycaps. The rise of bespoke keyboard designers that using off the shelf switches/keycaps is a constraint that pushes away the other two trends.
I'd think you can get mechanical keyboards with reasonable wireless functionality these days. If the range isn't long enough, run an active USB extension cord around the room and put the receiver under your couch. Laptops are of course the age-old space where keyboards are scrutinized to death.
I hate laptops now shipping with the Office 365 logo. Apparently the Windows logo wasn't enough. How many more Microsoft symbols will keep polluting keyboards?
constantly lowering my luminosity instead of refreshing my page :(
I hate the missing home/end/pgup/pgdn keys more (which is the case on basically all laptops, and you obviously can't just buy a different keyboard for a laptop).
Fn down and up arrows only good fn.
I totally agree and I feel you.
I have a bin full of pristine keyboards that never see the light of day because of Fn, arrows, Home, and/or End placement.
I used to work on 3 different laptops, so I kind of got used to thinking about every stroke using those keys, but I never want to go back there, it's so mentally taxing.
I find the "wrong" FN keyboards annoying like OP, but the Home/End to Pgup/Dn grouping of keys is what really makes or breaks a great keyboard layout for me.
Cant remember using a function key.. but i believe there are programs that do.
More curious.. are there people that use the caps lock key? Its great real-estate…
The caps lock key is good for binding to F13 and using for push-to-talk. I know some people bind it to escape for Vim usage but I don't like that because I'm likely to also use Vim on machines without that key remapped and that messes with muscle memory.
> there people that use the caps lock key?
Yes, of course. Because I programmed my Keychron for it to be a regular LShift. Works very good for my hands. But when I'm on the regular keyboard I have a real trouble with typing or entering passwords, but it's manageable.
> Cant remember using a function key
I use it for the volume control when I'm in a fullscreen app or with both hands on the keyboard - but only because my Fn is on the right and volume controls on F10-F12.
I definitely hate the G-keys on a Logitech G915 more though.
It's a perfectly good full size mechanical keyboard with low travel...and a row of keys on the left hand side which obliterates the typing ergonomics of it.
Meanwhile they stopped making the K740 which is basically the perfect keyboard (which I am now typing on after buying a replacement key - the Cherry Stream is good but man....this still just feels better overall - the key layout is just subtly right).
Meanwhile whoever at Lenovo thought to the put the function modifier key on the left outermost side, rather then Ctrl, has commited a serious crime against ergonomics.
“I don't like the keyboard I bought.”
> I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys (danq.me)
> 11 points by speckx 13 minutes ago | flag | hide | 1 comment
this is currently #1 on HN gaining 11 points in 13 mins. never seen this before.
I'm pretty sure I'm the first that upvoted it, when it was #2 on the "new" page, like 3 minutes ago. I was very surprised to see it here when I went back to the main page. I'm sure the topic hits a lot of nerves :)