Remapping modifier keys, customizing touchpad gestures, and more
One of Google’s main goals with Android 14 is to build upon the momentum of Android 12L and 13 by improving the experience on big-screen devices like tablets and foldables. While changes like native app cloning for multi-account logins and a slick new back gesture will surely be welcomed by everyone, people who use their larger Android devices as workstations stand to benefit from some changes for external keyboards and touchpads in the latest OS version.
A hidden menu spotted by XDA’s Mishaal Rahman contains new settings for physical keyboards connected to Android devices either by USB, docking pins, or Bluetooth. The menu can only be accessed by enabling a developer flag, then launching an alternate version of the Settings app called Spa, so these features are definitely in their early developmental stages and not guaranteed to make the final cut once Android 14 gets a public release.
Nonetheless, the “Physical keyboard” menu under Settings -> Languages & input now has an entry titled “Modifier keys.” Opening this menu reveals options for customizing the Caps Lock, Ctrl, Meta, and Alt buttons on your keyboard. Each item can only be remapped to one of the other items, but this should be handy for typing by muscle memory if your tablet’s keyboard has a different modifier layout than your laptop’s keyboard, for example.
Rahman also spotted new keys in Android’s generic key layout file, which tells the system what to do with particular buttons on your keyboard. Android 14 now supports a recent apps button, toggle and adjustment buttons for keyboard backlights, mute keys, dedicated buttons for zooming in and out, and focus keys. There’s also a new launcher flag that can be enabled to give your keyboard the ability to toggle full screen windows.
But Google didn’t stop there. Also hidden in the Spa settings app is a new menu found at Settings -> System -> Touchpad. Here, you can choose whether you want your external touchpad to register button presses with a single tap, invert the scroll behavior, or utilize a virtual right-click by tapping in the bottom-right corner.
There’s also a “Touchpad gestures” menu with lots of new goodies. You can swipe left or right with three fingers to go back, swipe up with three fingers to go home, swipe up and hold with three fingers to view recent apps, swipe down with three fingers to view notifications, or swipe left or right with four fingers to switch between open apps.
Finally, Android 14 is also adding support for non-QWERTY keyboard layouts — Apple Extended, AZERTY, Colemak, DVORAK, QWERTZ, Turkish-F, Turkish-Q, and Workman keyboards should all work natively now. And to help organize all these new features, Google has split up the “Languages & input” menu in the developmental Spa settings into two entries: “Languages” and “Keyboards.”
With most of these features being hidden away behind a developer flag, there’s no guarantee that they’ll make it to the final version. On the bright side, the public build of Android 14 is still a ways off — we’re expecting a release timeline of six developer previews and betas before the stable version — so there’s plenty of time for Google to finalize their new keyboard and touchpad controls.
