ChromeOS Luckily Will Finally Let You Change Keyboard Shortcuts

ChromeOS devices have become a lot more useful since Cr-48. With apps for Linux and Android, and “Internet-only”being much less of a hindrance these days, they’re attractive as a secondary machine. But having to learn a whole set of keyboard shortcuts to use them effectively will always be painful.

But help is on the way, judging by some experimental features in the latest beta version of ChromeOS (111). As noted in Kevin Tofel’s “About Chromebook”blog, the updated version of the shortcut viewer in the Settings app, first released in October 2022, has the early makings of a mechanism for changing and adding shortcuts.

Clicking on a shortcut brings up a dialog that allows you to currently add alternate shortcuts to the regular shortcuts for managing tabs, windows and desktops, system preferences, accessibility, and other utilities. The small “lock”icon next to each suggests that you can also unlock those shortcuts to remove or change their defaults. The Reset All Shortcuts button offers another hint. Unfortunately, none of the shortcuts you added are currently working, although there is a promise.

I’m the type to switch between Mac (work), Windows (gaming), Linux (Pi work and testing/inventing), and ChromeOS (common “home”laptop) on any given day. Of course, my brain is able to remember all the basic labels that I use. But the slight annoyance of having to reach into your mental filing cabinet for them, usually after just one keystroke on the wrong key, adds up to a major sigh-inducing frustration. I’ve used deeper system hacks or apps like Rectangle for macOS to set up shortcuts for most of these systems; ChromeOS hasn’t supported this kind of alignment and customization for a long time now.

Tofel lists three flags that he needed to enable in the chrome://flags section of his Beta Channel device in order to make the new shortcut viewer available; I had to enable another one before it would show up for me. These three plus one are listed below:

• chrome://flags# improved keyboard shortcuts
• chrome://flags#enable-shortcut-customization-app
• chrome://flags#enable-shortcut-setting
• chrome://flags#enable-only-show-new-shortcut-app

I also included chrome://flags#new-shortcut-mapping, although I’m not sure what effect that had. As noted, none of these shortcuts currently allow you to remap shortcuts, but they will likely be effective in an upcoming release of ChromeOS.