The Secret Beginner’s Guide to Switch Lube
Keyboard switch lubricants. If you thought people’s variation in opinions on switches was too wide to pin down a cohesive idea of what is good and what is bad, then you clearly have never tried asking people about their favorite lube for switches. Since the very beginning of modifying mechanical keyboard switches, everyone and anyone who has ever done this, even once, will have the most detailed, intricate, and sworn-too response as to what lubricant goes with what switch, why Brand A is better than Brand B, and so on. As someone who cares way too much about switches and has spent more than his fair share of time modifying them as well, I can with confidence say that 95% of these opinions, deep articles on comparing lubes, and all the niche cases people ascribe to them are actually useless. The vast majority of people wanting to read an article or watch a video about lubing switches likely haven’t spent enough time with them to develop a super informed opinion on them, and I think...
Apr 4, 2023
Solution 1 - Remap within MacOS The easiest and most universal solution is to change the mapping within MacOS; software remapping will work with any keyboard. This works on a per keyboard basis, meaning that the changes you make to your mechanical keyboard will not affect the layout of your laptop and/or Apple-branded keyboard.
- Open the MacOS Keyboard settings (Spotlight Search “Keyboard”, or System Preferences -> Keyboard)
- Click “Modifier Keys…” (lower right)
Remap the Cmd and Opt keys as desired (left key description is the physical keyboard, drop-down menu selection is the software action to map)Solution 2 - Remap the keyboard itself This is significantly more difficult (though made easier and easier thanks to community tools - don’t be scared away if it interests you) and requires a keyboard that can accommodate custom mapping (Drop ALT, CTRL, and SHIFT are easily remapped, while Drop ENTR cannot be remapped). The downside to this solution is that the key remappings are hard-coded into the keyboard logic itself, so if you move the keyboard back and forth between Mac and Windows machines, the layout will now be reversed on the Windows computer. Hardware remapping to swap Cmd and Opt is really only the ideal solution if you only use Macs and you are also interested in remapping other keys which cannot be configured in software (most common in a more custom layout board). I won’t be going into detail about the remapping process here, as it is more advanced and each method has its own detailed instructions already. Drop Configurator
Instructions for Drop ALT
Instructions for Drop CTRL
Instructions for other keyboards