My keycap gripes / wishlist

[Zobeid Zuma]

Features I look for when shopping for keycap sets:

Mini spacebars for split-spacebar keyboards, including Alice.  I'm pleased that these have become more common, but I still sometimes have to turn away from an otherwise attractive set that didn't include them.

SUPER keys (my preference as a Linux user). . .  or META, CMD, SYSTEM, ⌘, ◆, or even suitable novelties, but definitely not WIN or (worse!) the Windows® logo.

CODE or COMPOSE or SYMBOL keycaps that I can use for my. . .  compose key.  Some sets use CODE in place of SUPER, which is tauntingly unhelpful because I need both.  And incidentally, I dream of someday seeing a keycap set with the actual, official, international composition symbol: ⎄

I want location bumps or dimples on F and J, please.  And the 5 on the num pad too, while we're at it.  Not some subtly different "scoop" that I'm hopeless to distinguish by touch.

Secondary legends on the number pad keys!  You know what I mean. . .   The arrows, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, Ins, Del.  I guess they are considered antiquated now, but they still work in Windows and they still work in Linux.  (They never were a thing on Mac, AFAIK.)  My ideal is a "southpaw" keyboard like the recent Keychron Q12 or the Q14 Pro with the keypad located on the left side, and all those nav functions available to my left hand.  I can still find keycap sets with these legends printed, but it's turning into a bit of a hunt.  Once again I find myself turning away from set after set that's otherwise attractive to me but lacks these legends.

Lately I've been seeing sets that include three media keys: MUTE, VOL DOWN, VOL UP.  Which of course are the exact functions most people will already have mapped to the encoder knob that more and more keyboards come with now-a-days.  I'd much rather get PLAY/PAUSE, PREV and NEXT keys to put beside that encoder knob.

And finally. . .   Can we get CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK keys that indicator LEDs can shine through, please?  I really like being able to glance at my keyboard and tell if those lock modes are engaged.  GMK have sometimes (not often enough!) produced keycaps with a transparent window embedded, and they work great, I loved those.  I'm not too picky about exactly how it's done, though.  Pudding caps, maybe?  I'd be happy to even just get a couple of extra blank, fully transparent keycaps.  I don't need no printed legend, I'm not gonna forget what those two keys do.

[fanf]

More row 2 up arrows please, so my nav cluster has a nice dishy profile.

Row 1 `~ and \| for split backspace support. And 1.5u row 2 backspace.

More sets with icon legends instead of WORDS. What’s with the weird sets that have some icon modifiers and some words? Sometimes I feel weird novelty icons are easier to find than normal ones.

[Rhienfo]

Hmm that's interesting.

minimum alice spacebars + 2u spacebar should be necessary in every gmk/keycap base kit imo (maybe not dcs/sa due to the convex spacebars which most people don't like, so that reduces costs)

While I don't use linux (but want to eventually), I find it especially annoying that supers aren't in base kits for aesthetics mainly. I prefer to have r3 control and it looks weird to have that and controls on the bottom row, so can people please change that.

Also prefer having code over win keys cause code just sounds cooler  (though windows logo keys are lit if you have code as well)

I don't know why scooped is even in basekits cause bars/nips are so much better (idk maybe some people prefer it)

yesssss secondary legends on numpad look sick, especially on more neutral sets like biege, but I can see why someone could exclude it. Also a pet peeve but can we stop doing sets that don't have the numpad in the base kit please.

I use layers a lot so can't really talk about media keys.

I think those keys should be in a extension kit, I think most people including myself just use the base keys because they look nicer, but that's just me.

Only wishlist for me is stepped control keys, some keycap sets don't have it and I think it looks really nice and fits the layout I have.

[HungerMechanic]

It would definitely add to quality-of-life if more sets included a "SUPER" key.

And you're right, "CODE," alone, doesn't cut it. It needs to be included alongside "SUPER."

[CaesarAZealad]

And finally. . .   Can we get CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK keys that indicator LEDs can shine through, please?  I really like being able to glance at my keyboard and tell if those lock modes are engaged.  GMK have sometimes (not often enough!) produced keycaps with a transparent window embedded, and they work great, I loved those.  I'm not too picky about exactly how it's done, though.  Pudding caps, maybe?  I'd be happy to even just get a couple of extra blank, fully transparent keycaps.  I don't need no printed legend, I'm not gonna forget what those two keys do.

Pretty sure the reason we don't see too many shinethrough caps lock sets anymore is because (At least in my experience) boards don't support it, and they make caps more brittle, which causes a lot of production issues.
Also I gotta ask, does your board not have indicator lights? I'd assume even if you're using something like a 40, the inherent customizable nature of that genre would allow you some leeway.

[Rhienfo]

Pretty sure the reason we don't see too many shinethrough caps lock sets anymore is because (At least in my experience) boards don't support it, and they make caps more brittle, which causes a lot of production issues.
Also I gotta ask, does your board not have indicator lights? I'd assume even if you're using something like a 40, the inherent customizable nature of that genre would allow you some leeway.

A lot of the time those shinethrough caps go in extension kits if they appear at all, a lot of designers consider them a secondary option to the regular, or just forget to include them all together. It's just not as popular.

I recently started doing kitting for a hypothetical project, and the idea is to fit all the main layouts, and then for me (add an extensions kit with everything more obscure on it that's reasonable), something like shinethrough doesn't take away compatibility at all so it's either put them into an extensions kit like I did or just omit it in general.

Dcs extension kits have the keys in a lot of sets. I know there was shinethrough caps in wob essentials for gmk but not sure about others, they both do it. It's just not as popular.

[Zobeid Zuma]

Pretty sure the reason we don't see too many shinethrough caps lock sets anymore is because (At least in my experience) boards don't support it, and they make caps more brittle, which causes a lot of production issues.
Also I gotta ask, does your board not have indicator lights? I'd assume even if you're using something like a 40, the inherent customizable nature of that genre would allow you some leeway.

I was okay with the way lots of older/vintage keyboards worked, where they had their own indicator lights somewhere on the front panel apart from any keys.  Then I could remap those keys anywhere, and it wouldn't matter to the indicators.  That style seems to have fallen out of fashion, though.

A lot of my recent kits or custom keyboards that are VIA configurable also make the backlight LEDs perform double duty as indicator lights.

I mean for example, I just got a Keychron Q14 Pro, and I switched off backlight effects, because I'm not interested in that, but CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK still light up white when they're engaged.  That's barely visible with normal, opaque keycaps.  I put a set of GMK Pulse keycaps (Cherry profile) on that board, then I replaced those two keys with translucent blue PMK DCS profile (Cherry in all-but-name) caps.  That works really well, but it's not a universal solution.

[Haulien]

I have 2 massive gripes with the pipe/backslash key.

1) Majority of sets which have alt legends (eg katakana) that provide alternate row pipe/backslash (eg R1, R3, R4) don't include the alt legend on the smaller 1u pipe/backslash key, only on the standard 1.5u key. Or they'll include the alt legends on the R1 but not the R3/R4.

An example below: standard 1.5u gets the alt legend, R3 gets the alt legend. R1 however does not.



2) I wish sets that included a 1.25u shift (or even an ISO enter) also included a R4 pipe/backslash. Some do, most don't. GMK especially has tooling for these however it's hit or miss if the set will include one or not. R4 pipe/backslash with a 1.25u left shift is handy even with an ANSI spacebar on 60-75% layouts.