Hacker News Reader

Comment by hiatus | Hacker News Reader

Kind of a tangent but my biggest blocker to adopting an iPad workflow is the lack of support for a customizable keyboard layout. Does anyone know any app or something that allows this or non-canonical layouts impossible on iPad?

View on HN

F keys don’t work either, even with a Bluetooth keyboard.

Apple has intentionally dumbes down the iPad. It’s sad…

Edit: F keys as in F1-F12

I don’t see it as being intentionally dumbed down, more that it never got those features in the first place.

iPadOS was born out of iOS. Why would iOS build support for F keys? F keys themselves are a hold over from quite a while ago. Apple tied to repurpose that space on the laptop with the old Intel MacBook Pros. When building a new OS, with a new software keyboard without F keys, why would they spend time developing around something that didn’t exist? When adding keyboard support, why would they add support for keys that don’t exist on the software keyboard?

I can see where that would be low on the priority list. I don’t think anyone at Apple had F keys working, then actively deleted the code to handle it while laughing maniacally.

I too, am heavily invested in my keyboard shortcuts. Goku + Karabiner gives me the luxury of toggling between apps and doing repetitive actions without moving my hands away from home row. I really want to switch but this missing feature is a dealbreaker for me.

What do you want to change?

Modifier keys (Caps, Ctrl, Opt, Cmd, Globe) on Magic Keyboard can be remapped in Settings.

SecureShellfish (ssh client) has a keyboard bar, support for Function keys.

I want to remap my keys to a variant of the dvorak layout that is not included in Apple's list of keyboard layouts.

If native Dvorak is insufficient, try an external keyboard with customizable QMK firmware?

An external keyboard negates the whole appeal of the micro form factor. The magic keyboard enabling its use as a laptop without requiring a kickstand makes the iPad almost perfect if not for the lack of configurability of the keyboard. I know mine is a pretty niche case but thought maybe someone in the community has come across a solution.

I've not used it, but there's an app and OSS+commercial code for custom keyboards: https://keyboardkit.com/app and https://github.com/KeyboardKit/KeyboardKit

Reply on news.ycombinator.com