Can I configure my windows key to act like a fn key?

Question

I've always hated the Fn keys. Give me dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdnkeys any day. But then I got a new laptop (XPS 13), and used it almost exclusively for 6 months.

Now I go back to my desktop, and I'm unable to code in it without constantly hitting Windows+left, Windows+up, etc etc. Which does nothing useful, other than to move windows to one side of the monitor etc.

Is there something I can do to re-map Windows+up to page up, Windows+left to home, etc?

Solution

Fn keys can't be remapped because they do not send scancodes like all other keys which can be picked up by windows or other applications. Instead, it comes directly from the BIOS.

With the microsoft surface pro you can toggle your 'F' keys to be always on by pressing Fn + Caps. This means you can just press F1 without having to press Fn at all.

Double check your computer model against the user manual and see if such feature exists. You might get some luck with a toggle function existing for your machine.

Comments

[GiantTree]

fn keys are usually hardware-controlled. This means that your keyboard never sends the fn key to your OS but rather handles it itself. There is no way to remap it.

[phuclv]

My first requirement for any laptops is a dedicated Home/End/PageUp/PageDown at the proper position, although recently I've lowered it down to having a keypad so that I can use those keys on the numpad instead of the stupid arrow keys. Actually Win+arrow keys are quite useful when you need to open/compare 2 windows at once.

[Codemonkey]

I tried that and it doesn't even show the windows key in its layout, and all the other "similar" keys (ctrl,alt,shift,tab,caps,return,backspace) are marked as "unassignable", so even if the windows key was shown I'm not convinced it'd let me do much with it. Am I doing something wrong?

[Admin]

I'll update the post.