Introduction

Do you have a sweet new custom mechanical keyboard but can't figure out how to get your media keys back? Maybe you went from a TKL to a 40% and can't figure out how to get your numbers back. Good news, it's easy.

What are Keyboard Layers?

Keyboard Layers. Layers are how you get back whatever keys you want. Layers are how you can make your custom keyboard work just the way you want. They sound confusing, but they aren't. In fact, you already use keyboard layers everyday.

You think your keyboard looks like this:

But it doesn't at all. That number row has numbers and punctuation. The home row keys are labeled A S D F G H J K L but if you start pressing those keys you get:

a s d f g h j k l

All lowercase letters! A is actually a. If you don't press shift or control or any other modifier key, this is what you keyboard layout actually looks like:

The letters are lowercase and the number keys are numbers, not punctuation.

Let's call this Layer 0.

Now, let's momentarily hold down the left shift button. You already know what happens. While you are hold down the shift button, this is what your keyboard layout looks like:

The letters are uppercase and the number row is actually punctuation marks and symbols.

Let's call this Layer 0*.

And, if you let go of the shift key, you are back to Layer 0 with lowercase letters and numbers instead of punctuation.

See, you use layers all the time. You just never had control over what the layers do. The magic of customizing your keyboard, is just making your own layers!

Making Custom Layers

For this example, lets use my KBDfans KBD67 Lite R3, a sweet, gasket-mounted, hot-swappable, TKL layout. This keyboard can be customized using Via, lots of newer keyboards use Vial. The two are very similar. I'll use Via for this example, but if your keeb uses Vial, the process is almost identical.

Here is the default layout (in the upper left corner Via indicates which layer we are editing, in this pic we are on Layer 0):

I'd also like to have easy access to things like Vol + and Vol -. And it would be great if I could also turn the RGB lights on and off. This is easy with layers.

Step 1: Choose Key to Activate Layer

We've already seen how holding Shift gives us access to a new layer. We need to pick another key to access a custom layer. I am going to use the RWin key (Right Windows or Command on a Mac) as the key to activate my custom layer.

Caps Lock is also great choice to activate a custom layer for all kinds of keyboard customizations. It is in prime real estate but hardly gets used! We are just doing some media and lighting controls, so RWin is in a great spot.

To change what that key does, just click on it in Via. Now you can use the controls under the keyboard to select any keypress you'd like. If you look around in the Via app and on the website, you can see all kinds of custom keypresses you could set up.

We want to set up a Layer control. So first, click the RWin in the keyboard layout. Then from the panel below, select the LAYERS tab. There are alot of options here and they look confusing (and some are!) but we just need one of the MO(*) options. These change a key to momentarily activate a specific layer. Remember how holding down the shift key gets you a different set of keys, but only while you hold down the shift key? These are the same.

We are going to change RWin to instead be MO(3). If you press and hold this key, Layer 3 becomes the active layer. I am choosing Layer 3 because I already have some customizations set up on Layers 1 and 2, but you could choose whichever layer you'd like.

Great! Now that key momentarily activates Layer 3 on our keyboard. Our layout now looks like this:

Step 2: Set New Keys on the New Layer

If you click the Layer 3 button in the upper left you should see this:

All those triangles mean the keypresses just do whatever is on the layer below. Think of it like passing the default keypress. Esc on Layer 3 isn't set to do anything, so if you hold down the key to activate Layer 3 and press Esc, you will just get the regular Esc key action (as long as layer 1, or 2 doesn't change it, remember we are on layer 3). So, all the keypresses on Layer 3 will just do what they do on Layer 2. We are going to change that.

Just like we changed the key on Layer 0 we can just select whichever key we'd like to change in the layout section, and then from the controls in the lower panel we can set those keys to do whatever we'd like.

Vol + and Vol - are in the MEDIA tab. Toggling the RBG lights on and off is the RGB Toggle in the LIGHTING tab.

Here is what my Layer 3 looks like:

Step 3: You're Done

That's it. Our keyboard is customized.

Now if I hold down the key from Step 1 then Layer 3 becomes active and the top right button on the keyboard is Vol +. When I let go of the key from Step 1 it goes back to being Home, which is how it's set up on Layer 0.

Really, I don't ever use Home or End. If I wanted, I could just change those on Layer 0 to be Vol + and Vol - all the time!

Now you should have a taste for what customize your keyboard layers can get you.