jaraco
Jan 06, 2025Copper Contributor
Status:
New
Please add support for arbitrary control key remappings
I'd like to be able to use Windows App to connect to a Microsoft Dev Box from my Apple Mac computer. Because Apple and PC have different layouts of the control keys (Ctrl, Alt, Meta on mac; Ctrl, Meta, Alt on PC), muscle memory is broken when switching between a Mac keyboard and a PC keyboard. And because keyboards are embedded into machines (laptops), it's nearly impossible to find a unifying layout that allows for switching between a Mac and PC.
To make matters worse, keyboard shortcuts for Copy, Paste, etc, are different on Mac (Cmd+X) than on Windows (Ctrl+X). Some users including myself use a technique of swapping Ctrl and Alt on Windows in order to provide a Mac-like experience on Windows.
When accessing a Windows Dev Box from a Mac, the problems are multiplied, because the inputs are necessarily Mac layout, but the system is necessarily Windows.
The Windows App has already provided a feature in an attempt to help bridge the gap (Settings | General | Use Mac shortcuts for Close, Copy, Cut, Paste, Select All, Undo, and Find). It's great that this setting exists, as it already acknowledges the need to alter the keyboard layout between the host and the guest (remote machine). Unfortunately, this setting is woefully inadequate for creating a suitably uniform experience (in particular creating a familiar Ctrl, Win, Alt ordering of left-side control keys).
What I'd really like to see is an interface in settings like "Use Mac shortcuts", but instead allow the user to provide arbitrary remappings, similar to how Powertoys does for a machine.
You might be asking yourself, why not just use Powertoys, the aforementioned technique, or some other remapping software on the Mac? The problem is that those techniques apply either to the host or the guest irrespective of whether the host is being used to control the guest. What I really need is a way for these keys to be swapped, but only when using Windows App on Mac to control a Windows machine.
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