Help with Keyboard Preset for International Use

Configuration Help & General Discussion
1

Hello everyone, I've been using BTT for several years now, but I struggle to setup something to counteract a deep annoyance:

I'm french using a US macbook pro (with US qwerty keyboard [ANSI]). In order to use french accents, my keyboard is setup as International English. For exemple, the è is done pressing ` and then pressing e. And the é, similarly, is done with ' and e. So far so good.

Now, the ' and " key is right next the ... RETURN key. And, OMG, I can't count how many times I pressed this return key instead of the ', which, in chats or online forms, is an absolute nightmare as it cut the sentence and send it as is, aka incomplete.

  • Is there a way to prevent the RETURN key to be activated if the key '/" (or any other key, actually, because it would mean I missed it) has been pressed less than 500ms before (which would mean I'm currently writing a sentence, not jumping a line) ?
  • Or, reciprocally, having the return key to be only activated if no other keys have been pressed in the last half a second or so.

Or would someone see another workaround that would help not to loose my mind ? How do you do, international people with US keyboards without stickers?

Thank you very much y'all !
note : I tried other softs, like Keyboard Maestro, with little results.

2

If you only want to prevent this behavior in certain apps, then I would try short/long press.

Enter is typed if the key is held a little longer. A short tap does nothing.

3

Thank you Frank! This is the workaround I currently use, but it drives me as crazy. It's incredibly difficult to make my brain to get the reflex and use to long press return. Especially because most chats/writing issues are happening within a browser.

4

I see. How about a quick double tap on Enter?

What you want actually sounds feasible, but I don't know how. If it can be done, Andreas knows.

5

Thank you Frank, I'll try this! I currently use Keyboard Maestro for this, how can I achieve this on BTT? (even the long press enter). I struggle to set it up since this morning.

Shoutout to Andreas if he comes by here :slight_smile:

6

On the other hand, you could type these special characters with short/long press. Then you won't get anywhere near the Enter key.

7

Thank you @Frank1

I tried to setup the following with BTT (the long-pressed RETURN = RETURN for the Beeper app)

There are 2 Keyboard shortcuts

  • If pressed RETURN (trigger on key down), then NO ACTION
  • If pressed RETURN (trigger on key down) with minimum hold time of 0.5s, then KEYBOARD SHORTCUT of RETURN (send key up only).

It works the first time I use it, but makes BTT crash (every time). I have to re-start BTT manually.

@Andreas_Hegenberg am I doing this all wrong ?

8

I think the short press action (which does nothing) should be on key up.

The long press action (key down --> Enter) like this:

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9

Ah, by the way, if a key (e.g. Enter) is not to be “activated” if another key has been tapped (e.g.) 0.5 s earlier, then try this.

shortcut: “Enter” --> does nothing

Key Sequence: “Enter” --> fn Enter (which as far as I know is almost always the same)

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If you absolutely need the “real” Enter key, then use the action Insert own text (instead of fn Enter) :slightly_smiling_face: