Keyboard awkward hold behaviour

Community Support
1

Hi there,

I have noticed a weird quirk about my Framework keyboard and wondered if anyone has any ideas as to what is causing this and how to fix it.
This is particularly annoying when using the arrow keys to navigate a document.

Situation:
(1) When I hold Left and then press and hold Right (both down), the cursors starts to move to the Right.
(2) When I hold Left, lift Left and hold Right (only Right down), the cursor starts to move the Right.
These are expected behaviours, however,
(3) If I hold Left, lift Left and quickly hold Right (only Right down), the cursor only moves one space to the Right and then stops, even with the Right still being held down.
This creates a weird middle ground behaviour, where if I switch too quickly, it results in the cursor not moving more than one space to the right.

This problem exists regardless of which two keys I press. I just used the left/right buttons since that is when it is the most obvious.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone else is experiencing this or if anyone knows if this is a hardware or software problem.

Thanks,

TT

2

I’d never noticed this before, but just tested it and am seeing the same behavior.

I’m not a keyboard firmware dev, but I can’t reproduce with my USB keyboard, and the hardware is clearly working, so my guess is this is in the firmware.

Maybe a quirk for key rollover? Like the keypress is queued up for rollover instead of triggered right away so the repeat gets lost?

Edit: this is a batch 1, 11th gen, running Win 11

3

tested this on Windows 10, 11th gen mainboard and I’m seeing the same results. I wonder what OSs the two of you are running and if this could be a software issue as opposed to a hardware issue?

Edit: missed this part, maybe its not software lol

4

Thanks for the reponses,

I have the same setup as you, Azure - Windows 10 and 11th gen mainboard.

Interesting to hear that others are experiencing this too.
Any ideas how to update the firmware for the keyboard? Is this even possible?

1 Like
5

I can’t reproduce. 12th gen running Ubuntu 22.04.

6

HAH! It’s this exact issue (more or less) that got me into exploring the embedded controller. This behavior is controlled by the EC.

Specifically: in its emulation of PS/2, it keeps track of only one “typematic” key and disables key repeat when any key is released. See here.

As a result, releasing any key during rollover will stop the key that was held down from repeating.

I’ve got some thoughts as to how to fix this in firmware. :slight_smile:

7 Likes
7

Thanks for the reply.

Does this mean that there isn’t a fix for this behviour? Or is there anyway to update it?

I am surprised more people haven’t noticed this as it has been an extremely annoying behaviour to me. Maybe, it’s only a Windows problem…

8

You can update the EC yourself to fix it I believe! Probably more for more advanced users though.
Unless it really bothers you, I would say it isn’t worth flashing the EC, but hey, always worth learning something new :slight_smile: