- A new option for the Copilot key has been discovered in testing
- Windows 11 users will be given the option to turn it into ‘Do Nothing’
- This comes on top of the work already underway to redefine the right Ctrl or context menu key
Microsoft’s latest revolutionary idea for Windows 11 is to have a key on your keyboard that can transform into absolutely nothing.
Windows Latest noticed the latest twist in the Copilot key tale, as highlighted by regular leaker PhantomOfEarth on X, who spotted the development hidden in a recent Windows 11 preview build.
In the options to customize the Copilot key — which by default calls Windows 11’s Copilot AI (of course) — there’s a new option to simply “do nothing.”
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Yes, that’s correct – you can change the key to just be a pointless piece of plastic that zips precisely. (Or at least you’ll be able to test when this ability comes into play, that is, although some Windows 11 testers have reportedly already seen it live in preview).
As you may have seen earlier this year, Microsoft is working on bringing new capabilities to the Copilot key, which includes customizing it to call up the context menu (right-click) and to revert it to right Ctrl (which was the key that the Copilot button replaced on Copilot+ laptops and some keyboards).
Analysis: do nothing, be happy
What’s the point of a key that doesn’t do anything? Good question. Maybe it’s the keyboard equivalent of a stress ball – you can pound that key as much as you want when you’re really annoyed, and it won’t spill a bunch of characters into the document you’re working on while you exorcise your frustrated demons.
Okay, so maybe not, but maybe the idea is that this is aimed at people who really hate the Copilot key but haven’t decided what they want to turn it into. So they can go ahead and choose the key to do nothing if it’s accidentally hit while they figure out what they might want to redefine instead. That’s stretching things, admittedly, but it’s the best guess I have.
Anyway, it’s a harmless enough option, although it inevitably feels weird to have a ‘blank’ key on your keyboard. How far we’ve come since the Copilot key was first unveiled and trumpeted by Microsoft as the greatest thing to happen to keyboards in the 30 years since the Windows key was introduced. And indeed, recently Microsoft promoted the Copilot key as “the button you can press to fix everything”, so there’s some irony that it may soon (optionally) become the button you can press to fix ‘nothing’ in a very literal sense.
Don’t forget that you don’t have to wait for Microsoft’s Copilot key remapping features to arrive in the release version of Windows 11. You can use the Keyboard Manager in PowerToys to do this instead, although of course it would be much nicer to have these options in Windows 11’s settings.
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