I have two keyboard layouts configured in KDE System Settings on my laptop; “English (US) - Colemak” and “English (US)” (in that order).
When working with “English (US) - Colemak”, all KDE shortcuts (both default and custom) work as expected.
However, if I switch to “English (US)” (whether with a keyboard shortcut, or through the Keyboard Layout widget on the System Tray), the shortcuts get twisted.
Let’s take an example. The “Peek at Desktop” shortcut, by default, is assigned to Meta+D.
The shortcut works fine with “English (US) - Colemak”.
When I switch to “English (US)”, of course, the “D” key moves - when typing in an editor/browser, the key is in the expected position. But when I try to use Meta+D to “Peek at Desktop”, nothing happens. Instead I have to press Meta+G to run this shortcut. In other words, I have to press the button that is normally “D” when I’m using “English (US) - Colemak”.
This pattern holds for other shortcuts as well - e.g., if I have a shortcut that runs on Meta+Shift+S in “English (US) - Colemak”, then I will need to press Meta+Shift+D to run this shortcut from “English (US)”.
So it seems like, when I switch keyboard layouts, the KDE shortcuts remain tied to the original/main layout.
Obviously, I would prefer that when I switch layouts, the KDE shortcuts “adjust”, so that I can use the same keys (albeit in different buttons/positions) to run the same shortcuts across multiple layouts.
Has anyone else experienced this behaviour when using two or more keyboard layouts?
Is there a solution?
Side note for why I’m using both of these layouts.
Colemak is my day-to-day layout, and when working on the laptop keyboard, I use “English (US) - Colemak”.
However, I often connect an external keyboard (ZSA Moonlander, which runs on QMK). This external keyboard is fully configurable, and I have manually assigned each button so that it has a Colemak layout.
For some reason (not sure the details on this, something to do with input mapping), this layout will only work properly with KDE if I’m using either “English (US)” layout, or no layout at all.
Obviously I can’t go with the latter option, as I generally have “English (US) - Colemak” enabled, so whenever I connect the keyboard I switch to “English (US)”.
The reason I left this detail out above is because the use of the external keyboard is not relevant to the problem - the keyboard shortcuts are mismatched only due to the KDE input setting, not due to the keyboard.