- A new option for the Copilot key has been spotted in testing
- Windows 11 users are getting the ability to remap it to ‘Do nothing’
- This comes on top of work already underway to redefine the key to Right Ctrl or the context menu
Microsoft‘s latest revolutionary idea for Windows 11 is to have a key on your keyboard which can be remapped to do absolutely nothing.
Windows Latest noticed the latest twist in the tale of the Copilot key, as highlighted by regular leaker PhantomOfEarth on X, who spotted the development hidden in a recent Windows 11 preview build.
In the choices to customize the Copilot key – which, by default, summons Windows 11’s Copilot AI (of course) – there’s a new option to simply ‘Do nothing’.
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Yes, that’s correct – you can change the key to simply be a pointless piece of plastic that does precisely zip. (Or at least you’ll be able to in testing, when this ability comes into play, that is, although some Windows 11 testers have reportedly seen it live in preview already).
As you may have seen earlier this year, Microsoft is working on bringing fresh options to the Copilot key that include customizing it to invoke the context (right-click) menu, and to turn it back into Right Ctrl (which was the key that the Copilot button replaced on Copilot+ laptops and some keyboards).
Analysis: do nothing, be happy
What’s the point of a key that does nothing? Good question. Maybe it’s the keyboard equivalent of a stress ball – you can hammer on that key as much as you want when you’re really annoyed, and it won’t splurge a load of characters into the document you’re working on as you exorcise your frustrated demons.
Okay, so maybe not, but perhaps the idea is that this is aimed at people who really hate the Copilot key, but haven’t decided what they might want to remap it to. So, they can go ahead and elect for the key to do nothing if it’s accidentally hit, while they figure out what they might want to redefine in its place. That’s stretching things, admittedly, but it’s the best guess I have.
At any rate, it’s a harmless enough option, although it feels inescapably odd to have a ‘blank’ key on your keyboard. How far we’ve fallen since the Copilot key was first revealed and trumpeted by Microsoft as the biggest thing to happen to keyboards in 30 years since the Windows key was introduced. And indeed more recently, Microsoft promoted the Copilot key as the “button you can press to fix everything“, so there’s some irony that it could soon (optionally) become the button you can press to fix ‘nothing’ in a very literal sense.
Don’t forget that you don’t have to wait for Microsoft’s Copilot key remapping functions to arrive in the release version of Windows 11. You can use the Keyboard Manager in PowerToys to do this instead, although it’ll be far neater to have these options in Windows 11’s settings, of course.
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