We’ll be launching this summer with US English and French Canadian keyboards, as well as blank keyboards for the DIY Edition.
As we roll out to additional countries later this year, we’ll continue to add more keyboard languages for both pre-built Framework Laptops and the DIY Edition. The keyboard is also replaceable if you’d ever like to change layouts or languages.
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Good to know. French keyboard would be awesome (as well as other european languages).
Do you plan to offer keyboards with full-sized arrow keys and full begin/end/page-up/page-down keys?
Like this one:
It’s far more convenient than the industry-standard half-sized arrow keys.
Thanks!
Hi @Amaury_Bouchard! We’ll definitely be supporting French and most other European languages that keyboards exist for. In terms of physical layout, we’re constrained by the Framework Laptop being compact and portable with a 13.5" screen. You can see from the photos that the keyboard currently covers basically the full width of the system.
I suggested in an Instagram post the EO keyboard layout… Are you planning to offer it if not at release date maybe in the future?
@nrp The picture I sent is from a 13.3" Clevo computer. Even if the Framework laptop has less border around the screen, there should be no reason to be unable to fit these full-sized keys in the keyboard. At least the arrow keys.
In fact, even a 12" Asus EeePC 1201 had a full keyboard in 2009 (well, I guess the keys were a bit smaller):
Honestly, full-sized arrow keys are really much more comfortable.
Real begin/end/page-up/page-down keys (instead of key combination) are also a plus when you are coding on your laptop. I know very few coders who are using an external keyboard.
Maybe we don’t need extra-long shift keys? Reduce them will help to set a full-sized “up” key (like Asus, Lenovo, etc. did).
Another example: the 13.3" Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro (2015)
Will there be backlit keyboard available?
@Ricky_Wee Yea! The Framework Laptop comes with a backlit keyboard.
Also, check out the recent deep-dive blog post we did on the keyboard for info more about the design. Framework | Framework Laptop Keyboard
We use a 3:2 aspect ratio screen, which makes the body of the Framework Laptop narrower than 16:9 13.3" laptops. Between getting a great screen aspect ratio for productivity, avoiding making the system wider than it needs to be, and keeping full size key caps, we utilized all space available for the keyboard. We certainly would have added an extra column of keys if we could fit it!
I guess everyone needs to understand the keyboard options are going to be limited to whatever can fit between the holes in the chassis; things like adding extra keys to the right of enter or things like an ortholinear layout probably won’t be possible.
That being said, there’s still options! I for one would love to see T-shaped arrow keys in the future, maybe with the top half of the left and right arrow keys substituted with hard rubber or something you can’t press, and so on.
Please can we have an HHKB keyboard layout variant? I use that layout exclusively and find it fantastic. I would buy a framework laptop based on that alone 
That is technically possible! As you noted the core constraint is fitting into the existing enclosure.
Could you clarify what the HHKB layout is?
HHKB is an initialism for the Happy Hacking KeyBoard. Its a keyboard that is notorious for its typing feel as well as the layout. It’s the layout that I’m curious about being an option here… that notably has the Control key in place of CapsLock among a few other changes. Here’s the layout:
@Andrew_Wood You can remap our keyboards to make it follow that layout from a software perspective (I personally remap Caps Lock to Control as well). Windows PowerToys has a pretty powerful remapping utility, and I believe it’s straightforward in most Linux distros too. We’re investigating a firmware-level remapping option as well, but that is likely further in the future.
We probably won’t do HHKB artwork unless there is a lot of demand, but we do have blank keyboards.
Don’t forget spanish layouts! I’m in love with latinamerican layout for writing, but it’s such a pain to find a laptop with this layout on foreign markets.
Reading the topic suggests that a matrix-layout keyboard would be possible.
How likely are reduced-number layouts or other layouts with ergonomic intents for regrouping keys and adding thumbgroups?
matrix keyboard would be amazing.
or just make it easy to take the default keyboard out so we can at least place something like https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo on top
