[Keyboard Manager] Remap Windows Key to Shortcut for Specific App

[microsoftmatt]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Remap the Windows key to a keyboard shortcut for a specific application

Scenario when this would be used?

I want to use a fullscreen RDP session as one of my virtual desktops. I would like all of the common Windows keyboard shortcuts (e.g., Alt+Tab, Alt+Shift+Tab, Win+X, etc.) to work in the RDP session except for the virtual desktop shortcuts (e.g., Ctrl+Win+Left and Ctrl+Win+Right). This will allow me to interact with the remote desktop and swap in and out as if it was just another one of my local virtual desktops.

So far, I've accomplished most of this functionality by setting the Remote Desktop "Apply Windows key combinations" setting to "On this computer" and using PowerToys Keyboard Manager to manually remap any Windows key shortcuts I want to use on the remote machine to the Remote Desktop equivalent (e.g., Remap Alt+Tab to Alt+PgUp for mstsc.exe only). When there is no Remote Desktop equivalent (e.g., Win+X), I create a custom shortcut on the remote machine and remap the local shortcut to my custom shortcut (e.g., Remap Ctrl+Shift+X to Win+X on the remote machine and remap Win+X to Ctrl+Shift+X for mstsc.exe only on the local machine).

The only thing I'm missing is remapping the Win key to open the start menu on the remote machine. When I try to map Win to Alt+Home in PowerToys, I get a warning that "some shortcuts could not be remapped" and it doesn't save the Win key remapping. I've worked around it by mapping Win+S to Alt+Home instead, but it's not ideal.

[noraa-junker]

/dup #3481

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!