How to Start Dictation on macOS with a Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Keyboard

I was using my friend's Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Keyboard when I was staying at their house for a few days. I really liked the keyboard so I bought one for myself. It's been great so far, and my only issue with it is the function key (Fn). Pressing Fn just toggles a light on the key, and it doesn't actually send any keypress event, so I couldn't figure out how to start dictation. It took me quite a while to figure out how to solve this problem, but I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed figuring it out. I thought I write up a detailed answer on StackExchange and post on HN.

I'm really impressed with Karabiner-Elements. They have a documentation site [1] with some really interesting examples for complex rules.

I like the idea of setting up keyboard shortcuts to launch apps [2]. There's also a safeguard for command-q, so you always have to press it twice. (Google Chrome already does this, so you could even set up a condition to ignore the rule if Google Chrome is the active application.)

I'm looking forward to coming up with more ideas for shortcuts and workflows. This is like having bash aliases for your entire operating system.

[1] https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org

[2] https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/#apps_launch_any_l...

[3] https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/#command_q