I’m a big fan of my daskeyboard mechanical
keyboard, using the built in KVM on my
monitor to switch between my MacBook and my Windows desktop throughout the
day. This works smoothly apart from the loss of muscle memory for touch
typing, particularly around the cmd
and ctrl
keys, which are switched
between the two OSes. As good old ctrl+[zxcv]
is a major part of the typing
life cycle, this drives me bonkers when on Windows as Windows+C brings up
Cortana and Windows+V brings up the multi-clipboard functionality, neither
of which I use.
After hours of cursing, I finally motivated myself enough to track down how to remedy this mismatch. What follows are two methods I’ve employed, partly to document what I’ve done for Future Me.
Method 1 - Registry Hacking
Simply disable both of these annoying hotkeys under Windows:
- Disabling Cortana:
reg.exe add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v VoiceShortcut /t DWORD /d 0
- Disabling Windows+B shortcut:
reg.exe add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v DisabledHotKeys /t REG_SZ /d V
A quick log-off-and-log-in and my clumsy MacOS muscle memory no longer brings up pop up windows and “helpful” features.
Method 2 - Remap the Keys
A perhaps more graceful solution (apart from becoming a better typist),
using the PowerToys
Keyboard Manager, I have remapped the cmd
and left-ctrl
keys under Windows
to swap their logical assignment. Now the same physical keys perform the same
function, regardless of my operating system. As a bonus, I remap the caps lock
key to esc
to make that more accessible (something I quickly took to after
being afflicted with the horrid touchbar on my MacBook).