On Windows, I use C as both a Push to mute shortcut on Fluxer (also Discord) and as a Push to talk key on games (Counter-Strike 2 in my case) so when in a call with friends, I could communicate in game without disrupting them with my in game calls.
On KDE Plasma 6.6.5 Wayland, Fluxer’s keybinds are handled through KDE Global Shortcuts where C can’t be set as a single key shortcut without a modifier key. I could force it by setting the bind with a modifier such as Ctrl, exporting the shortcut scheme, removing the modifier from the exported .kksrc file and re-importing it.
While that does work to trigger the Global Shortcut on Fluxer, I then could not type C anywhere which includes not being able to use it as the Push to talk key in CS2 as I guess KDE locks that key only to be exclusively used for the Global Shortcut.
I propose an option to allow letters to be used as single key Global Shortcuts while still allowing input from that key on the system globally.
it sounds like you want to have C work as a shortcut in specific apps AND you want C to type the letter “c” rest of the time.
short of some app specific keyboard mapping, or some other way to inform the system that while you are typing a C on the keyboard, what you actually mean for it to execute this shortcut… i don’t see how the system could possibly know your intentions.
typically this is done by using the modifier keys, but you exclude that as an option.
it sounds like you want to have C work as a shortcut in specific apps AND you want C to type the letter “c” rest of the time.
Not the rest of the time, simultaneously. The C key should trigger the Global Shortcut and be handled by the focused window.
i don’t see how the system could possibly know your intentions.
The system doesn’t need to know my intentions, in the way I’ve described above on how it works under Windows, the shortcut can be activated and simultaneously trigger C in the regular way in the focused window.
I hold C to temporarily mute on Fluxer (or Discord, TeamSpeak, any app that has ‘Push to mute’ as a keybind option. I guess ‘Hold to mute’ makes more sense.) and simultaneously trigger ‘Push to talk’, again ‘Hold to talk’, in the focused window, in my case Counter-Strike but can be applied to many other multiplayer games as shown in my examples below.
I understand it’s a weird use case and maybe even an uncommon one but I’m definitely not alone in using ‘Push to mute’ in this way. Here are 5 examples of popular Reddit/Twitter posts of others doing the same. Apologies for the one screenshot but I wasn’t allowed to put links or multiple screenshots in my message.
so you are talking about app specific shortcuts, and any of those should still work (note: these are not called Global shortcuts, because they are not global, but instead are app specific).
for instance, on firefox—in this forum—if i type c while i’m browsing a post here, it will offer up the reply text box and place the letter c as the first letter of my post.
so it’s both acting on the input and passing the input.
you can look into your settings > window behavior
and explore the focus options as well as the window actions tab to see if your key presses are being handled and passed as you expect.
Fluxer’s shortcuts are handled through KDE Global Shortcuts (since you want to be able to trigger them while focused on another window such as a game) and while a single letter (in my case c) is bound to an action, that key cannot be used on any focused window, be it Counter-Strike, this forum in Firefox, Konsole or Kate.
To be clear, while I’m talking about my use case with Fluxer. This same behaviour occurs if I for example set c to decrease my volume and then type c in this forum text box, it would ONLY decrease my volume, not decrease my volume AND input c here. As I am doing here:
As default, this behaviour would probably be desired by most users but it doesn’t allow for edge use cases like mine where you want to trigger an action in an unfocused window through a Global Shortcut and simultaneously have that keypress forwarded to the focused window. This is why I think an option to simultaneously forward keypresses that are bound to a Global Shortcut to the focused window would be beneficial.
On second read of your reply, I realize I may be using Global Shortcut incorrectly where I might just mean a app-defined shortcut. I have seen Global Shortcut used in several places while researching this before posting and they could have also been incorrect in their Global Shortcut usage.
Apologies for that confusion, I would edit my previous two replies if the rules here weren’t so strict. Come on guys, first the links, then only one screenshot per comment and now can’t edit after 10 minutes.
