Type Different: Changing the Keys on Your Keyboard

June 2026

Keyboard Basics

There's a few things to know about keyboards you plug into your computer:

They have little computers in them.
When you press a key, the little computer in the keyboard sends a signal to your actual computer telling it what key you pressed.
The little computer in your keyboard is programmed with a map that defines which keys send what signals to your computer (i.e. when you press the "a" it sends and "a" signal).
Some keyboards let you reprogram the map to change the signals each key sends (e.g. you can set it up so the "a" key sends the "z" signal).

(Keyboards built into laptops work the same way. It's just a little easier to think about them as separate things for this post.)

Good Defaults

Each keyboard come with a default map that defines the signal each physical key sends to your computer. That map is what lets different keyboards lay out keys in different ways. For example, the "Alt" key on this keyboard is the third one from the left.

A close up of the lower left corner of black keyboard with white lettering. The first three keys on the bottom row are 'Ctrl', 'Fn', and 'Alt'.

On this one, (where it's labeled both "alt" and "option") it's the second from the left.

A view of the lower left corder of a white keyboard with black lettering. The first three keys on the bottom row are 'control', 'alt / option', and 'command'.

Thanks to the maps, the computer receives the same "Alt" signal regardless of where the key sits on the keyboard.

Change-Up

You can change things around if you're keyboard has a way to reprogram the mapping. For example, you could reverse the letters of the alphabet. So, pressing an "a" sends the signal for a "z", "b" does "y", etc... Probably a bad idea, but totally possible.

A more practical example is moving frequently used keys so they are easier to reach. As an example, I use parenthesis all the time when I'm programming. By default, the "(" and ")" keys are mapped so you have to reach up to the number row and hold shift to type them.

I updated the map on my keyboard so it sends the signal for "(" when I hit the "j" key while holding down the "control" (aka "Ctrl") key. The "l" key does the ")".

Landing Changes

I use a keyboard called a Moonlander. It looks like this:

A white moonlander keyboard. It's a split keyboard with a wire that connects the left and right pieces.

Here's how the keys are mapped for the right half:

A graphic showing the right half of a moonlander keyboard with letters in their stander positions.

When I press the "control" key, they switch to this:

A graphic showing the right half of a moonlander keyboard. It shows various symbols like '(' and '{' that are on or closer to the home row than a standard keyboard layout.

That's how I get the parenthesis under "j" and "l".

The keys are mapped specifically to reduce how far I have to reach when programming. The goal is to reduce the risk of repetitive strain injury (RSI) issues.

The Rabbit Hole

In theory, you can update the mapping layout on any keyboard. In practice, that's not the case. You can only do it if the manufacturer provides an app that let you do it¹.

Lots of "mechanical keyboards" provide that software. Start looking into those if you want to change things up. Fair warning though, there are a billion options and even more opinions.

Totally worth it, though.

-a

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Endnotes

I glossed over some of the complexities of how keyboards work. For example, the signal that's sent when you press a specific key is a code instead of an actual character.
It's also possible to update some computers so they do different things when they receive given signals. For example, you press the "a" key and your keyboard sends the "a" signal, but the computer acts like it received a "z" signal and types that. It's been a while since I've looked into that. Last time I did, the options weren't great.
The full keyboard layout mapping for my moonlander is on this page.

Footnotes

¹ you can also get into hardware hacking, but that's a different thing entirely.