Am I the only one that thinks we should have dedicated buttons for copy/paste on keyboards?

CTRL-C / CTRL-V too much? ;)

We do. ctrl+c / ctrl+v

Oh man, you were born too late for the wild 90s era of experimental keyboards

I disagree. [Modifier] + C & [mod] + V works just as good as a dedicated button and you are using the space more efficiently by having multiple uses for one key.

Keyboard already has a lot of buttons. We should be considering which to remove, not any additions

Meh, Ctrl+C Ctrl+V works well.

What I really would like is a Compose key.

The concept is brilliant, you use it with a special key combination to "draw" a special character or symbol.

If you wanted to type a copyright symbol you would hold the Compose key and press O and C in order, then release the compose key.

Here is a list of a few characters with their compose key combinations, every combo is pressed in order while holding the compose key.

To get the letter Ä use " and A

To get the letter Å use o and A

To get the letter Ö use " and O

To get the letter Æ use A and E

To get the symbol ¿ use ? and ?

To get the symbol ¡ use ! and !

To get the symbol ® use O and R

To get the symbol ™ use T and M

To get the symbol € use C and =

To get the symbol £ use L and -

There are plenty more combinations....

I have never used a computer with a compose key, but I love the concept of drawing other characters like this.

Come to the vim side, we have y for copy (yank) and p for paste. We even have d for cut

Not to be that guy, but on Linux if you highlight text you have already copied it to a different clipboard than the CTRL-C/V one, and can paste it by a middle click. This has been the default in Linux since before I used it (I'm 17 years in with Linux), but CTRL-C/V are so in my head that I usually forget to do it.

I was told that this would go away with Wayland, but I just tested it in a Plasma6 Wayland session and it clearly has not gone away.

I tried binding them to my MMO mouse keys once, and immediately removed them when I imagined how easy it would be to accidentally copy and paste something unwanted into a PowerPoint presentation. WFH and all that, you know. It’s good that it takes a tiny bit of intention.

no, never. 34 keys is all you ever need

Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V have been so burned into my muscle memory, relearning to use just a single dedicated button might actually be more trouble for me than just using the standard hotkeys.

That's why I got a mouse with extra buttons on the side, so I can just copy and paste using my thumb.

Having keys to the left of ctrl is a fucking mess! Ine of my kids have a gaming keyboard with a extra column of keys there and it is a pain to use.

What should happen, is move capslock to the locks row on the tip right side. And give us a new meta key there instead! That would be a win-win

Why is it that keyboards have not evolved to have dedicated copy/paste keys left of the main board?

You mean like on a Sun type 4 keyboard, they had this since the early 90’s at least.

If you want this, you can try to find a Sun type 7 keyboard which has a USB connector. You should be able to get it to work on Windows with a bit of remapping of the extra keys.

I generally think that chording is superior to single button presses, which is what is normally done, but if you want a single button, you can either set up some existing button on your keyboard that you don't use to do that or, if you want to keep those, you can get a macro pad, and set one of its buttons up for that.

https://www.amazon.com/macro-pad/s?k=macro+pad

EDIT: Apparently there are some macro pad manufacturers that cater to specifically your ask. Examples:

https://www.amazon.com/BTXETUEL-Select-All-Shortcut-Mechanical-Programmable/dp/B0BW135TW5

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PKJMK6L

If I was an evil peripheral manufacturer, I'd not only add keys to copy and paste, but I'd add them to the mouse too.

Then I'd have a small display in the keyboard that showed the last five things you copied, and let you select which one you'd paste.

That way users would get used to it, have to buy my gratuitously expensive peripherals with displays in them for no reason, and then not know how to use anything else.

Have you tried the shortcuts for the other side of the keyboard

Ctrl + insert = copy

Shift + insert = paste

Shift + delete = cut

I find them much easier to use than the traditional shortcuts.

Got myself a cheap Chinese programmable foot switch with three switches that enables me to do exactly that without fucking up my normal layout. And it can be switched to other things depending on the application as well. Very useful.

I have a mouse that happens to have two extra buttons off to the side and mapping those to 'copy' and 'paste' has been the best thing i've ever done for my productivity. Also mapping middle mouse button to 'screenshot to clipboard' but that's just a personal thing i happen to do a lot

Keyboards already have too many keys. Your fingers are extremely inefficient at certain distances so you should never even touch numpad with proper keyboard design. 10 fingers can combine a lot of keys.

I wish there was a dedicated hotkey combo that worked across all applications for paste plain text

I do.

No, it should be on the mouse.

If you're using Linux, you can do this easily with custom key bindings.

I don't know about that but I think we need two clipboards, standard. If we had the existing clipboard and a second with dedicated keys that would be very helpful.

I guarantee I can hit ctrl-c faster than I can move my hand to a different part of the keyboard.

That button's name... Middle Mouse.

I think that everyone who really wants that will spend a half an hour learning how to remap keys.

Just buy this

When I started my current job, I thought I was getting a repetitive stress injury from the hundreds of copy pastes I was making daily. Eventually I got used to it, but my hand still hurts occasionally.

I am 100% behind the idea of dedicated buttons!

At some point, the populace felt keyboard shortcuts were enough and they have everything else they need on a keyboard. It's the standard, other keyboard designs didn't really quite take off, and most people can barely use a full-sized keyboard anyway.

Some people prefer smaller keyboards, and are willing (and wanting) to have more shortcuts and function layers for ergonomic and desk space reasons.

(If you use a 40% or smaller keyboard, you're weird, and I love/hate you.)

Some other people use so many shortcuts that it becomes so infeasible to remember or press them all, so they get macro pads, or even entire additional keyboards to function as macro pads.

One of my computers has a clipboard key that's for pasting.

Except I'm totally used to ctrl-C ctrl-V, so I never use it.

I can see the benefit, although personally I'm too attuned to ctrl+c,v,z,x

A key I'd really like to see on computer keyboards is a shift key that behaves the same as on a phone, toggling between lowercase, Title Case, and UPPERCASE.

It'd be so useful to be able to select text you've already typed and change the format. Phones have done it for years, why not computers? Could be a much better use for the Caps Lock key.

Mm, I wouldn't hate it. It could take the place of the scroll lock and pause break buttons on my keyboard, two keys i've literally never used.

Back in the day there were 12 more keys that could be bound to that but they decided to get rid of them.

Logitech G910 has a bunch of extra keys that you can create macros for and on mine I've got three of them set just for that

I'm pretty happy working as a developer where I can choose my own editor. (Neo)Vim, Kakoune, now Helix, they all just have one single key used for copying (/"yanking") text to a register: y, and it's bloody fast. I can't even use VS Code without a Vim or Helix or Kakoune emulator extension. But of course I prefer to use the faster, pure terminal applications.

To be honest I'm not really that great with Vim actions anymore. Even if I was using it for about a decade. The Kakoune and Helix model just made too much sense.

Now that you've said it, it does seem like an obvious improvement.

My keyboard has a column of configurable macro keys. My last one had two columns. I use them soooo much I have literally never bothered to figure out how to set them up on this one.

I've seen a few that do that, actually. Like a media keyboard with buttons for music controls, there are some that have additional functions like copy, paste, cut, double space, double enter, etc.

If you have a QMK compatible keyboard you can do that.

I used to have a keyboard with dedicated copy and paste keys. Never used them.

It's true they would probably be more useful to the average keyboard user than say the scroll lock key, or the fucking copilot key. But to be really useful, they would have to be easily accessible without moving you bands, or else it'd just be faster to use a shortcut. Keyboards with macro keys do exist so maybe get one and map them to CTRL+C/V

Do them 100000 times and see how comfortable they feel

I have a mouse with programmable (ish) keys and I have some buttons assigned to copy paste. I like it.

Some keyboards have media keys for that. Some user environments also allow you to remap those keys to other functions.

Mech keyboard nerds are laughing in QMK...

Barring that, for Windows there's Auto-Hotkeys or MKLC (Win10)/Keyboard Manager (Win11). For Linux, I use Input Remapper for remapping mouse keys, but it works for keyboards too.

Seems like it would be more useful macro'd to extra mouse buttons.

Keyboard only people are plenty comfortable with frequent shortcuts.

Get a VIA or QMK customizable keeb and you can make any key into any key you want.

I got one of those 8BitDo retro keyboards a while ago, the one with the FamiCom color scheme, and it comes with these two giant "a" and "b" buttons that you can map to macros. You could set one of those to CTRL+C and the other to CTRL+V and just bop either button when you need either function.

Some of us... Do.

Well I’ve found Mac key commands a lot more ergonomic since I can use thumb and index finger instead of pinky. I still end up mashing control c all the time in my terminal, but anything centered around the command key is way nicer. That said, inside classic editors like vi/vim and emacs, there are completely different copy paste commands that don’t use modifiers.

I copy paste a lot, but it feels natural- I also have to paste with modifiers a lot for things like “paste and match style”, paste as quotation, etc… a dedicated button would probably complicate that. Final thought- unless you move an existing button out of the way, a dedicated button would be hard to reach, where as command/control c/v are directly under fingers already.

I think this is a good idea though it would have to be easier to press than the current hotkeys. I'd also love to have two different clipboards so I could have two things copied at once.

I think we should have MORE combination buttons! Typing should be like playing the piano imo

My Cloud9 ErgoFS has dedicated keys for that. But, my fingers have known Ctrl+c/v for my entire life, plus they're more easily reachable, so I still do that.

My only problem is Linux at home and Mac at work with the same keyboard so I tend to accidentally hit super+c in Linux because that's the cmd key on Mac

Tidbit: some command windows let you paste by right-clicking the mouse in the window. They know we ain't typin' all dat shit

Nah, my keyboard has too many buttons as is

What you want is something like https://github.com/hluk/CopyQ.

yes

No, because ctrl is so close to c and v

Ctrl + Ins

Shift + Ins

Usually much easier than the usual combo