The ChromeOS Shortcut Customization app has loads of new tricks up its sleeve (Canary)

Back when I first started tinkering with the ChromeOS Shortcut Customization app, it was extremely limited in what it could and could not do. Mainly, it was a place to show you what keyboard shortcuts you could already perform on the system. There was no way to really add or change any of them – well, aside from a very select few.

In the latest version of ChromeOS Canary (v110) and perhaps 109, this is changing drastically. Gone are the days when your Chromebook tells you what to do. While these are not officially rolled out yet, you’ll be happy to know that there are too many new shortcuts to list – all of which can be customized to your liking!

I’ll quickly give you some examples, at least. You can now change the keyboard combination for turning your device brightness up or down, rewinding media, swapping between virtual desks, enabling or disabling Caps Lock, Signing out of your laptop, launching items pinned to the shelf, locking your screen, and almost anything else you can think of. If I took time to list them all or even to provide screenshots of everything, it would be too overwhelming.

Aside from system shortcuts, there are also nearly 50 for Windows and Desks, 10 shortcuts for Tabs and Pages (including seeing your notifications, toggling Wifi, the projector marker, and so on), 8 for Text and Input (pinning/unpinning apps, changing the volume, snapping windows) and more. Whew!

Some of favorites that I’ve set up are the ability to quickly launch the Emoji Picker, zoom in and out of the screen, swap primary external monitors, launch screen recording, the clipboard, dictation and even floating windows (a newer feature). Again, there are so many more than there used to be, and I’m extremely excited for when these will hit ChromeOS Stable. Until then, you can hear me gush about them or try them out for yourself (at your own risk!)

To put it plainly, I’d say that this much power is probably too much for some users, and they may end up tinkering a bit too much. Traditionally, ChromeOS has been simple by nature to avoid such a problem (ahem, Windows!), but power users have long since cried for more tools to customize their experience. To customize a shortcut, you’ll have to press 1-4 modifiers and 1 other key on your keyboard while the shortcut customization tool is open for a specific feature.