I recently bought a #Keychron K8 Max mechanical keyboard and have spent some time using it and thinking about it.

https://oxcrag.net/blog/2026/01/18/Keychron-K8-Max-Review.html

#mechanicalKeyboard #keyboard

Well, after limping on my beloved Dynex for another month, it died. And this random modern slim keyboard I dug out of my closet is terrible.

At the earlier suggestion of @rpmik @ryanspengler and @fschaap I picked up a Keychron. Sorta seemed like the Q6 mechanical w/ the knob and the brown Gateron G Pro switches was a good fit. Guess we'll see.

ALSO: I now know way too much about keyboards. #keychron

Falls jemand eine Tastatur von #Keychron auf Linux nutzt, einfach die VIA-App installieren. Die erstellt auch eine entsprechende udev-Regel.
https://github.com/the-via

A couple of updates.

I’m done with #Soulframe https://no-pe.netlify.app/soulframe/

There is a #KeychronLink (USB dongle) issue where it appears as a gamepad and interferes with your actual gamepads. I solved the problem by plugging via #HIDRemapper. So, the #KeychronM6 is not the best mouse. https://no-pe.netlify.app/mouse/#keychron-link-problem

#keychron #GamesAsAService

Looking into customizing my #Keychron K8 with different #MechanicalKeyboard switches

Doing some research on how I even want it to sound and I quite like the sound of what they call "creamy" and after some typing sound tests I'm afraid I'm gonna cream MYSELF from just typing on those 🥴🥴🥴

It's also kinda funny how I get more ASMR-like tingles from the sound tests of those switches than the actual ASMR videos I put on for sleep aid 😂

The Mystery of the Vanishing F4: A Tale of Exceptional Support

How many times have you navigated the labyrinthine corridors of after-sales support and thought to yourself, “I wish there was just a real person on the other end, someone who understands common sense and can take care of this the way I would if I were in their shoes?” We live in an era of automated chatbots that loop you into infinity and “support tickets” that feel like they’ve been launched into a deep-space black hole. But recently, I had an experience that reminded me that somewhere, behind the cold glass of our monitors, there are humans who actually get it.

The Great Keyboard Heist

I had the weirdest incident the other day. I sat down at my desk, looked at my trusty Keychron mechanical keyboard, and realized that the F4 key had simply vanished. It wasn’t on the floor or in the desk drawer. It was just gone.

For those who aren’t initiated into the cult of mechanical keyboards, these aren’t your standard, mushy office planks. They are precision-engineered tools of tactile joy. They feature mechanical switches, which are the spring-loaded mechanisms under every single key that determine exactly how a click feels, sounds, and reacts. Some are “clicky” (sounding like a 1950s typewriter), some are “linear” (smooth as butter), and some are “tactile” (with a satisfying little bump).

I honestly do not know where my F4 key went. The best explanation I can come up with is that it was lost to an over-enthusiastic bout of cleaning. I know this sounds weird, but hear me out: I believe a vacuum cleaner sucked it away in a moment of domestic diligence.

The Dilemma of the Missing Cap

How do I deal with a missing tooth in my digital smile? The beauty of a Keychron is that it is built for enthusiasts. It features replaceable keycaps, which are the plastic “hats” that sit on top of the switches. In this hobby, people often “mod” their boards. You can swap your keycaps for different colors, materials like PBT (which is durable and matte) or ABS (which is smoother but can get shiny over time), and even different “profiles” or shapes.

I am not that far into this hobby yet, but the draw is undeniable: you can change your switches and keycaps from time to time for a completely different typing experience without buying a whole new unit. It’s like being able to change the tires and the interior of your car whenever you get bored with the commute.

I thought about buying another full set of keycaps. “I’ll change the colors or designs, and it will be a fresh new look on my desktop,” I told myself, trying to find a silver lining in my vacuum-induced tragedy.

Lost in the Catalog

I went to the website and found the model I had. Between the K-series, the Q-series, the V-series, and the “Pro” versions of each, it was a gauntlet. Then I found a few keycap sets that seemed to support my keyboard.

But here is where it got tricky. They did not have the exact same set I currently owned. The similar sets I found did not have the same number of keys. Some were for Tenkeyless (TKL) boards (keyboards without the number pad), and others were for 60% boards (ultra-compact versions that strip away the F-row and arrow keys to save desk space). The replacement sets I found were missing the arrow keys – those directional navigators we all take for granted until they’re gone.

I would hate to use my keyboard like this, with a gaping hole where F4 used to be, although I literally never hit the F4 key. It’s the principle of the thing! It’s like having a beautiful sports car with one hubcap missing. It still drives fine, but every time you walk up to it, you feel a small piece of your soul wither away.

The Waste of the “All-or-Nothing” Approach

I briefly considered buying an entire set just to use the F4 key. The price was not terrible – maybe $30 – but what a waste. I’d have 103 perfectly good keycaps sitting in a box in my closet for the next decade, eventually to be inherited by my confused grandchildren. I did not want to do that. It felt ecologically and logically offensive.

Then, I saw a chat window on the website. I asked which sets supported my exact model, still hoping to find a matching replacement set. The responder was quick but couldn’t solve it right there, telling me to write an email to the official support team.

I wrote to support, expecting a canned response like: “We do not sell individual keys. Please purchase the Full Artisan Gradient Sunset Set for $55. Have a nice day!”

The “Learned Resourcelessness” Trap

Instead, they replied and said they could send me a single replacement F4 key 🤯. I would only have to pay for shipping and handling of $8.

What a relief! But it also made me pause and reflect. How many times have I tried getting support and thought my request was getting lost among silos and rigid processes?

In these situations, I often think: “I wish I could just talk to a person like me who can go and get things done.”
In this case, I did not even think to ask – in my learned resourcelessness – whether they could send me a single keycap. We stop asking for simple, logical solutions because we’ve been trained to believe that “companies don’t work that way.” We assume the system is too rigid to handle a request for one tiny piece of plastic.

Why Sometimes “Raw” Support is Better Than “Polished” Support

If it was me on the other side of that help desk, I’d do exactly what Keychron support did. I’d reach into a bin, find the key, and say, “Just pay for the postage, and it’s yours.” And that is how things ideally should work. I am sure that is not how it exactly went down, but I would like to think that it did.
These types of solutions result in less waste, less cost, and produce excellent customer satisfaction. That’s how support should be run. It’s the “human-to-human” model of business.

In fact, the solution was so “raw” – maybe somehow makeshift – that I had to fill out a PayPal form to take care of the shipping cost. To handle the $8 fee, the form added 8 “products” with the amount of $1 to my cart.

The geek in me absolutely loved this. It’s a “workaround” – a clever hack to use an existing system to solve a non-standard problem. There is nothing wrong with not automating the tail cases. These cases happen so rarely that it’s not worth writing a million-dollar piece of code to fix them. You just need a human with a PayPal link and a padded envelope.

Celebrating the Small Wins

We tend to talk about bad support experiences a lot. We vent on social media when a company fails us, or when we’ve been on hold for forty minutes listening to elevator music. It was about time I wrote an article about a process that actually worked well.

This wasn’t a grand, life-changing event. It was just a tiny piece of plastic. But it represented a company that empowers its employees to be helpful rather than just being “compliant” with a script. It’s the difference between a company that wants your money and a company that wants you to keep enjoying their product.

To be clear: This post is NOT sponsored by Keychron. They have no idea I’m writing this. It is based entirely on my real-life experience that I captured and published because it made my day a little bit easier.

Now, if emerging startups could have just found a way for me to talk my vacuum cleaner into giving back my original key, I wouldn’t have spent an hour working on this solution. I am not holding my breath until that day comes. I am just happy to know that $8 and a little bit of human empathy still saves keyboards from a life of incompleteness.

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Créer un clavier mécanique avec le Mac en tête mais ne pas pouvoir mettre à jour le firmware de ce même clavier avec un logiciel ou une application Mac, tu me déçois un peu #keychron. Meh.
(Je ne vais pas télécharger Chrome pour tes beaux yeux, qu’on se le dise.)

I bought myself a new keyboard with Christmas money, and after just a day of using it, I'm honestly kind of stunned by how much of a difference it's making.
I picked up a Keychron K10 Max from Amazon and got it yesterday, and I don't think I ever want to go back to a membrane keyboard again.
For context: before this, I was using a Logitech Ergo K860. It's a split, membrane keyboard that a lot of people like for ergonomics, and it did help in some ways — but for me, it was also limiting. My hands don't stay neatly parked in one position, and the enforced split often worked against how I naturally move. It also wasn't rechargeable, and the large built-in wrist rest (which I know some people love) mostly became a dirt-collecting obstacle that I had to work around.
Another big factor for me is that I often work from bed. That means my keyboard isn't sitting on a perfectly stable desk. It's on a tray, my lap, or bedding that shifts as I move.
The Logitech Ergo K860 is very light, which sounds nice on paper, but in practice it meant the keyboard was easy to knock around, slide out of position, or tilt unexpectedly. Combined with the split layout, that meant I was constantly re-orienting myself instead of just typing.
The Keychron, by contrast, is noticeably heavier — and that turns out to be a feature. It stays put. It doesn’t drift when my hands move. It feels planted in a way that reduces both physical effort and mental overhead. I don't have to think about where the keyboard is; I can just use it.
For a bed-based workflow, that stability matters more than I realized.
With chronic pain, hand fatigue, and accessibility needs, keyboards are not a neutral tool. They shape how long I can work, how accurately I can type, and how much energy I spend compensating instead of thinking.
This new keyboard feels solid, responsive, and predictable in a way I didn't realize I was missing. The keys register cleanly without requiring force, and the feedback is clear without being harsh. I'm not fighting the keyboard anymore. It's just doing what I ask.
What surprised me even more is how much better the software side feels from an accessibility perspective. Keychron's Launcher and its use of QMK are far more usable for me than Logitech Options Plus ever was. Being able to work with something that’s web-based, text-oriented, and closer to open standards makes a huge difference as a screen reader user. I can reason about what the keyboard is doing instead of wrestling with a visually dense, mouse-centric interface.
That matters a lot. When your primary interface to the computer is the keyboard, both the hardware and the configuration tools need to cooperate with you.
I know mechanical keyboards aren't new, but this is my first one, and I finally understand why people say they'll never go back. For me, this isn't about aesthetics or trends. It's about having a tool that respects my body and my access needs and lets me focus on the work itself.
I'm really grateful I was able to get this, and I'm genuinely excited to keep dialing it in. Sometimes the right piece of hardware, paired with software that doesn’t fight you, doesn’t just improve comfort. It quietly expands what feels possible.
#Accessibility #DisabledTech #AssistiveTechnology
#ScreenReader #NVDA
#MechanicalKeyboards #Keychron
@accessibility @disability @spoonies @mastoblind

New personal best: 92WPM at 100% acc

This time on Keychron K2 with MX2A Browns.

#Typing #Keychron #Keyboard

I love the #KeyChron keyboard. I only wish I could store the dongle in the keyboard when not needed. that is the only constructive feedback I have.

Happiness comes in small doses. Sometimes it's a cold beer, sometimes it's replacing your quiet and subtle #Kaihl Brown #keyboard switches with deliciously clicky Kaihl Whites in my trusty #Keychron K6.

Clicky shit like this would get you shived in a shared office, so this is for the home office. It's delicious. Just listen to this (not my video):

https://youtu.be/hlCjITJI02Q?si=sqtYvDCKet5X8LJZ&t=66

Does anyone know if the #Keychron Q6Max update will fuck up the keyboard still, or has that been fixed? I haven't updated the software for that reason but yet I know its a good idea.

Il est arrivé, le #Keychron V6 Max.

Oh dear, #Keychron. Please don’t fuck your product up like #MonaApp is doing. I don’t think I can handle another fall from greatness so soon.

fn+tab. and i can put the box it came in away until the next time...

i love the keyboard first for the feel of its keys and second for the way they sound. blinkenlights is not part of the appeal at all. #keychron

ugh, i've accidentally turned on some RGB effect on my #keychron while moving monitors and now I have to find the user guide and rediscover how to turn the bloody thing off again.

switching between effect easy. turning them OFF... not a clue.

One thing I'll never understand is why the #MechanicalKeyboards people overwhelmingly go for tiny minimalist layouts.

Like, if your hobby is keyboards, why would you want less keyboard per keyboard?

I don't buy the desk space excuse. A 100% keyboard is marginally bigger than a smaller one and it fits on any desk I've ever seen.

Even moreso, I use so many programs and games that rely on more 'obscure' keys like PgUp/PgDown, the numpad, Insert, and so on. Also, working on spreadsheets or documents would be hell without those keys.

Even my full-size #Keychron sometimes lacks some keys for some applications in my opinion. Who gets into keyboards as a hobby who evidently doesn't use keyboards extensively?

#keyboards

Trasteando con el #keychron launcher para customizar el teclado.
En Linux hay que modificar permisos a un archivo para que la conexión funcione, porque pese a indicar el navegador "dispositivo HID conectado" no terminaba de funcionar.
Solución encontrada en el foro de #archlinux 😊

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=285709

En mi caso revisando el log en chromium "chrome://device-log" tengo que modificar permisos a /dev/hidraw1

Fediverse, where do you buy your keycaps for Keychron keyboards (are there even standards?)

I want to replace the Super key on my K3 Max with one that matches the colors of the stock keyboard, but that doesn’t have the awful Windows logo.

#keychron #mechanicalKeyboard #keyboard

hi #FediFriends 👋 does anyone have any #Keychron keebs or Keychron #switches in their #keebs? I’m trying to find an optimal setup for a friend’s first #MechKeeb based on her preferences from trying a couple of mine & keen to know about anyone’s experience with Keychron Banana or Silent Yellow switches (as well as any other quiet #tactile switches if you have recs for different brands) 🙏

#MechanicalKeyboards