this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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On german QWERTZ keyboards, you need to use shift to make : and !.
On US ones as well, I think they just put the relevant key-symbols and excluded the combination press as they can be assumed.
I have a custom keyboard with a QMK firmware. I enabled something called auto shift. It's the best. Just hold down the key you want shifted, and it auto shifts. I settled for enabling this for capital letters and symbols. So comfortable not to have to press the shift key.
So you hold down the first letter of each sentence longer so that it capitalizes rather than hold shift? That feels like it would completely mess with my flow when typing. Shift just happens naturally for me and I don't register I'm pushing it.
Exactly like that, yes. Or 1 for exclamation point, or 2 for @. Just like on a phone keyboard, with tap and hold for symbols and numbers and such.
I've had this keyboard for a few months now and I didn't enable it exactly for the reasons you mention.
I enabled it a few weeks ago now just to try it, and wow, I though I didn't notice myself pressing the shift key, that it "came naturally". Boy was I wrong. Now whenever I have to use the shift key it feels so cumbersome lol. Typing has become so comfortable now.
I use a ZSA Voyager for reference.
What if you wanna repeat a character?
I spam the key. But that is such an extremely rare case that it's worth the trade-off. The firmware also does allow you to add a key to toggle auto shifting on and off, so I could just add that if I want, but I don't see the need.
If I need to repeat a character many times in a text editor, I'd just use the features of the editor to do so. Helix or Neovim has you covered for repeating characters thousands of times and copying it to the clipboard with a handful of keystrokes if you wish. But what an edge case though.
For double letters, I just double tap like you would normally when typing. 👍
How does it work in games, like holding W?
I have a separate "gaming" layer on my keyboard. That way I disable all the autoshift, and other weird layouts/functionality I use for typing/coding. QMK and other keyboard firmwares are pretty powerful and feature rich. So there are plenty of ways to get around situation, including using a combo of key presses to toggle the autoshift functionality for instance.
Also, for context, minimizing finger and wrist movement is far more important for my use cases than typing speed is. To that end, I split my spacebar in half and put backspace and shift under my right thumb. I only use autoshift for my number row.
Yeah I imagined you'd need something like that. I might give the feature a try, I have a keyboard with Vial, a real time configurable fork of QMK.
Since acquiring this keyboard, I haven't played any games where I don't use a controller. But I imagine it won't work. I'd have to disable auto shift in those cases. And like the other comment said, there are several ways to work around it, like gaming layers, key combos to toggle auto shift, etc. 👍
Does this break games? Where in the input pipeline is the long press converted to shift? Being in the firmware implies that it's in the keyboard itself, so even games wouldn't be able to see that you're just holding W to go forwards.
Exactly, it's on a firmware level, so before it reaches the connecting wire.
Also see replies to this comment: https://sopuli.xyz/comment/19236969
Yea, this would be super slow.
Here in Tarzania we hold the superior and elusive ! key
Same on Dvorak.
Though the custom coder's Dvorak I use while programming has a dedicated ! key. Shift still needed for : though.
Slovenian ones too
Common French W. AZERTY proves itself superior once again.