3 Clever Uses for Your Keyboard Volume Button (Other Than Music)

You may have noticed that mechanical keyboards have grown in popularity over the past decade, with dedicated groups and stores designing custom boards and pads, like Cannonkeys and Novelkeys. Many of these cards often feature a button of some sort. In fact, this trend has grown so big that some retail mechanical keyboards also contain one or two buttons. While the added aesthetic of a button is clear, bringing style to what is typically a utilitarian device, the functionality of the keyboard itself becomes slightly enhanced with a button that turns and perhaps even clicks. A single rotary encoder can give a keyboard three methods of control, and this can be expanded if you use keyboard firmware that supports multiple programmable layers, which both commercial and open source firmware tend to offer – one of the many reasons enthusiasts choose mechanical keyboards.

Ultimately, there are many different ways to customize the functionality of a keyboard button, and this is where analysis paralysis can set in. So rather than settling for the default volume controls with your mechanical keyboard button, we’ve rounded up a few alternative control methods that you might find just as useful. So if you’ve always wondered what exactly you can do to get the most out of your keyboard button, the options below can help, whether you’re looking to control your keyboard lighting, want to easily navigate web pages, or simply need a faster way to zoom in on small text. A keyboard button can be much more than just a volume control, and here are some of our favorite alternatives.

Many mechanical keyboards and macropads offer some sort of lighting, whether it’s per-key lighting, bottom lighting, or both. But why waste time memorizing key combinations to change these settings when you can easily map your lighting controls to your button? If you have a rotary encoder that clicks, even better, because you can set it to turn the lighting on and off with a simple press of the button while still retaining the ability to change your brightness with a twist of the knob. Or if you don’t plan to change your brightness very often, you can map the rotation of the knob to change the theme of your lighting, allowing you to easily change your lighting on the fly, perhaps to match the LEDs in your CPU case.

If your keyboard has some form of built-in lighting, you should be able to program your button through firmware settings to control an assortment of lighting features that typically default to key combinations, whether you’re using an affordable mechanical keyboard for macOS or Windows. You can go even further by mapping an assortment of lighting controls to your button across multiple layers, from increasing or decreasing the color saturation of lighting to adjusting the speed of certain lighting effects. So whether you want to speed up a Knight Rider animation to match the look of the series or simply want to change a deep color to something a little more muted to better match your PC’s setup, by diving into your keyboard’s firmware and cleverly changing a few shortcuts, you can easily adjust your lighting in a much more intuitive way: with the twist or click of a button.

Typically, we use our mouse wheel or touchpad to scroll through websites on our desktop and laptop computers. But have you ever considered programming your keyboard button for this task? Not only does this create a tactile way to scroll websites on laptops, but it’s also a great method for keeping your fingers on your board instead of removing them to control a mouse or touchpad. Sure, you can use your arrow keys for something similar, but turning a knob is a lot more fun, and if your encoder fires, you even get physical feedback that an action like scrolling has taken place.

Again, if you’re more interested in writing than browsing, instead of using a button to scroll in small steps like a mouse, you can define a somewhat similar function by mapping the button’s rotation function to PgUp and PgDn. This is handy when writing documents, allowing you to easily jump to the beginning or end of a document faster than with traditional scrolling. When browsing websites, it still works the same as a regular scrolling feature, but again with larger steps to move faster.

Either way, a button lets you interact effectively with documents and websites by simply switching your shortcut from volume control to something a little more useful, like scrolling or navigating through them. Hell, if your button clicks, you can combine these functions. Set the button click to PgUp so you can more easily navigate to the beginning of a document or website, then set the button’s rotation action to scroll so you can scroll more slowly. This way, you can navigate more naturally to the bottom of a document by scrolling, then click the button several times to quickly move to the top of the page.

If you’ve ever tried working on a small screen, it can be a headache to constantly micromanage small text. Why not set up a macro (combining two key presses into one) so that the button on your keyboard invokes your operating system’s zoom function? This way, even if you’re using a 4K display, perhaps without upscaling, you can still easily zoom in on anything that’s not readable, like when you’re browsing the web or reading a PDF – or maybe you just want to make sure that what you’re sharing on Zoom, an essential app for any remote worker, is readable enough for your team. Connect a shortcut to a magnifying macro to the button on your keyboard and you’re in business.

Of course, there are different ways to zoom in on a given operating system. Many applications have their own keyboard shortcuts, and there is usually an operating system-wide command that uses a magnification feature that will allow you to zoom in on anything on your screen. You can even combine these two options with the use of one or two additional layers, or simply set the shortcut to show the operating system magnifier with a single click and then use button scrolling with your browser’s zoom shortcut. You have many options for programming a keyboard button with a selection of zoom features to your operating system and applications.

Whether you just want to zoom in an app or prefer to magnify anything on your screen, the option is likely available with your mechanical keyboard software. Ultimately, your button is more than just a volume control: it’s a window to every shortcut you can imagine, including zooming in on small text by turning a dial.