You're probably wasting these keys on your keyboard — here's how to remap them

Most of the keys on your keyboard have an important purpose, but that's not the case for all of them. While the letters, numbers, most symbols and modifier keys like Shift are all vital, when was the last time you intentionally pressed a key like F7 or Scroll Lock ? These keys are useless at best, and in some cases hitting the wrong one (like Caps Lock or Insert ) can interrupt you and waste time.

In addition to disabling annoying keys, it's also easy to remap any key to another function. If you never type in all caps, changing the Caps Lock key to do something else justifies its prime real estate on the keyboard. Take some time to map your keys more sensibly, and the time you spend typing will become more efficient.

There are a couple of ways to change what keys do on Windows. For most people, the best option is Keyboard Manager , one of the many tools inside Microsoft's free PowerToys suite. If you don't have PowerToys installed already, grab it from the Microsoft Store or GitHub .

Once it's open, select Keyboard Manager on the left sidebar and turn on the Enable Keyboard Manager slider. Next, click Remap a key to open a panel, followed by Add key remapping . Under Select , choose the key you want to overwrite by either clicking Select and typing it, or choosing it from the dropdown below this. Then, do the same under To send: to pick what the remapped key becomes.

For example, if you select Caps Lock on the left and Delete on the right, then pressing Caps Lock will have the same effect as the Delete key; it won't toggle caps anymore. You can repeat this process multiple times to remap different keys.

You have a few other options beyond single keys for the To send: section. Key combos work, allowing you to enter shortcuts like Ctrl + Shift + Esc to launch Task Manager. The dropdown menu also has controls like Help , Play/Pause Media and Start Mail that are easy to miss. Pick Disable from the top of the list to shut off a key without changing its function.

Alternatively, change the Send Key/Shortcut box to Send Text , and your remapped key will write the text you enter in the box below. While this can be helpful for common text like your email address or phone number, a text expansion utility like Beeftext or a clipboard manager like ClipClip are better productivity tools for entering these repeated snippets.

Finally, try the Remap a shortcut panel to change shortcuts in a given app or across the system. For instance, if you use Ctrl + P all the time but find it uncomfortable to reach, change it to Ctrl + Q .