Remap your keyboard with SharpKeys 3.5

One of the most overlooked components when choosing your next Windows PC is its keyboard. You get so caught up in making sure it’s fast enough, feature-packed enough and with enough storage to forget that something as fundamental as the keyboard could make it practically unusable.

Often it’s not the keyboard itself that’s the problem, but rather the way certain keys are laid out. If you find yourself accidentally hitting one key when you mean to hit another, or find the Caps Lock keeps mysteriously coming on, then SharpKeys 3.5 is for you.

SharpKeys exploits a Windows Registry tweak that allows for keys to be remapped to other keys (or disabled entirely). It’s a useful tweak that has worked since the days of Windows 2000, but it can be a right pain delving into Regedit with carefully constructed codes to attempt to convert the Caps Lock key into Shift or to disable the Insert key altogether.

SharpKeys takes the pain out of keyboard remapping by providing you with a neat and simple interface to select the key you wish to change, either from a list or by pressing said key, and then choosing the key to map it to or disabling it entirely. It’s all done by point-and-click, you can set up as many remappings as you like and then you just click the magic “Write the Registry” button and either logoff or restart your PC to effect the change.

It’s not 100 percent effective -- only US English keyboard mappings have been applied here, so less common key combinations won’t work, such as [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [3] for the Euro symbol in European markets, for example. There’s also an element of risk involved -- avoid disabling or remapping keys that could be vital later on, such as [Ctrl], [Alt] or [Del]. Nevertheless, SharpKeys is a quick, simple and painless solution to the problem of bashing the wrong key.

SharpKeys 3.5 is a free open-source download for PCs running Windows 2000 or later. It also requires the .NET Framework 4.0 Client.

Photo Credit: Liv friis-larsen/Shutterstock