PowerToys: Keyboard manager breaks 3 and 4 finger touch pad taps with certain remaps

Environment

Windows build number: 10.0.18363.836
PowerToys version: 0.18.1
PowerToy module for which you are reporting the bug (if applicable): Keyboard manager

Steps to reproduce

Configure an action for 3/4 finger tap in Windows Settings -> Devices -> Touchpad
Turn on Keyboard manager in PowerToys settings
Remap Alt with Control
Remap Control with Alt

Expected behavior

For 3 and 4 finger tap gestures configured in settings to work For the Control and Alt key to be swapped

Actual behavior

3 and 4 finger taps do nothing Control and Alt key do still swap as they should

Screenshots

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 22
Comments: 17 (4 by maintainers)

Links to this issue

Most upvoted comments

Reason this is happening: Although not visible to the user, these gestures are made up of keys. For example, the three finger tap gesture uses the following keys: Ctrl Left + Shift Left + Win Left + F22, so when you remapped the Ctrl / Alt keys it could no longer access left Ctrl.

trying to figure out what we can do about this! great catch

saahmedm on Jun 3, 2020

Here is some of the information we were able to find. Remapping Win/Ctrl/Alt/Shift or F13-F24 could lead to some of the following gestures and special buttons to break:

A subset of Surface Keyboard Attachments (some have specialized buttons for Search, Charms, etc.)
Bluetooth Pens from Wacom, Surface, etc. that have a tail button (used for launching Whiteboard, taking a screenshot, etc.)
Physical Rotation Lock buttons on tablets
Signaling of pen being removed or returned to pen garage on Surface Pro X and similar OEM models
Some 3F/4F Precision Touchpad Gestures

I’ve linked to this issue on the Known Issues section on the KBM wiki https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/wiki/Keyboard-Manager-Overview#4-known-issues

arjunbalgovind on Oct 21, 2020

They should update how the touchpad works in the future release of Windows, or PowerToys needs to do the inverse when using the touchpad separately which I believe is pretty hard.

sccccchallz on Nov 22, 2021