There are many reasons why one would want to remap the keys of their keyboard. One reason is when we buy a keyboard that lacks keys for a specific operating system. We can use key remapping tools to assign a different action to existing keys on that keyboard.
Another reason which I found through experience is when one or more keys on your keyboard become damaged and you are still waiting for the new keyboard to be delivered. In that situation, we can remap the keyboard keys to bring back the urgently needed keys on the damaged keyboard.
For both of these situations, we can use the open-source Microsoft Power Toys (which is still in beta) to remap the keys. Here is how you can use Microsoft Power Toys to remap keyboard keys:
- First of all you have to download Microsoft Power Toys from https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/ and install it on your Windows PC.
- After installation, launch Power Toys and select the Keyboard Manager from the list of the toys.
- Make sure that the Keyboard Manager is enabled and then click on Remap a key.
- In the remap keys window, you will see all the key mappings. In order to create a new key remapping, click on Type under Key and then type the key that is to be mapped into something else.
- After this click on Type under Mapped to and type the target key.
- Click on the OK button and it is all set.
If you have set Left Shift to be mapped to Left Ctrl then whenever you press Left Ctrl, it will acts like Left Shift. We can remap as many keys or key combinations as we want as long as they are causing conflicts. These key remappings will work only when Microsoft Power Toys is running in the background. If you want to always use these keyboard remappings then you can make Microsoft Power Toys run automatically at Windows start.