Missing or Misplaced Keyboard Shortcuts on Your Non-English Chromebook? Here’s What to Do

By
Are any keyboard shortcuts missing from your Chromebook with a non-English keyboard, or aren’t where the documentation says? It’s not just you. So star these issues in the Chromium tracker to let Google know they are widespread and require action:
If you have a Chromebook with a keyboard layout of a language other than English, you likely realized a lot of shortcuts work only with different keys than the ones the Chrome OS help center or the Settings > Keyboard > Show keyboard shortcuts tool list. And some shortcuts are missing altogether.

Keyboard shortcuts for virtual desktops listed in the Chrome OS keyboard mapping tool on an ASUS Chromebox 3
The keyboard shortcuts for virtual desktops listed in the Chrome OS keyboard mapping tool on my ASUS Chromebox 3. On Italian keyboards the shortcuts aren't where they're supposed to be and some are missing.

There's a common cause.

It’s an issue involving the missing shortcuts for docking windows filed almost 3 years ago to the Chromium bug tracker. Although assigned to a team member, the issue is still open, and no progress is being made as it requires a lot of work. This issue is blocking other ones, including an issue with missing shortcuts for virtual desktops I have recently reported.

These are showstoppers. For example, using virtual desktops is mostly useless without the keyboard actions for quickly switching between desks.

I've been experiencing the same missing or misplaced shortcuts on all the devices with Italian keyboards I owned since I started using Chrome OS in March 2015, across all Chrome OS Stable versions the devices went through. My previous Acer C720 Chromebook (also another C720 unit with a Spanish keyboard I had briefly) as well as an i3 ASUS Chromebox 2. My current Lenovo Yoga N23 Chromebook and an i7 ASUS Chromebox 3.

If it affects you, be sure to star the issues.

Update

Chrome OS 92, released on August 2, 2021, finally fixed the issue. I can't believe it took Google almost two years.

Popular posts from this blog

Using a Bluetooth Keyboard on Android

By
Image
Two years ago I bought a cheap Bluetooth keyboard from Amazon.it. At €14, it was mostly an impulse buy for exploring mobile typing on the go and in similar settings , such as workstations with reduced desk space. My FREALL 7INKEYBD-BK Bluetooth keyboard. I initially used the keyboard with the Android tablet and smartphone I had, a 7” Lenovo Tab E7 and a Pixel 2 XL. I later repurposed the keyboard for the devices I replaced those with, a Lenovo Tab M8 HD 8” tablet and a Pixel 4 XL smartphone. Despite the simplicity of operation, it took me some trial and error to figure out how to pair the keyboard with an Android device and what keystrokes insert the characters I need, such as accented letters when writing in Italian. Moreover, I realized I never blogged about my experience with the unit. So I’m posting these notes in case you come across the same or similar keyboards. The keyboard The keyboard is a cheap, compact, plastic chiclet unit that comes with a small foldable stand for a ta
Read more

Lenovo Tab M8 HD Review

By
Image
I bought a Lenovo Tab M8 HD , an 8” Android tablet. It comes with a MediaTek Helio A22 SoC, an IPS panel, 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of storage. I ordered the device from Lenovo’s Italian online store for €134. In this post I’ll share my early impressions on the device. The packaging box of the Lenovo Tab M8 HD tablet. Motivation The Lenovo Tab M8 HD replaces the Lenovo Tab E7 7” tablet I bought almost a year and a half earlier. After enjoying the Google Nexus 7 2012 and 2013 tablets I left Android slates for several years. My return to tablets with the November 2019 purchase of the cheap Lenovo Tab E7 was a sort of impulse buy. I wanted an affordable Android slate small enough to be compact but with a large enough screen to help productivity . I also figured it would double as an ebook reading device and let me explore the Android ecosystem. The Tab E7 was nice but limited. The screen didn’t have good touch sensitivity, performance was poor, there was a lot of lag, and the screen was no
Read more

How to Add Code Syntax Highlighting to Blogger

By
Image
On my blog I always wanted to format source code in Python and a couple more languages, but couldn’t find a convenient way. Until I read a tutorial on adding syntax highlighting to Blogger blogs like mine. The Blogger post composer actually provides the monospace Courier font that may be used for source code, but it works well only for inline text . If I apply the Courier font to a block of code, the composer renders each line as a separate paragraph. This leaves too much vertical space that makes the code look ugly. A workaround is to switch to the HTML view in the composer and wrap the block within <pre> ... </pre> tags, which insert the correct line spacing. However, the code doesn’t stand out on the page and there’s room for improving its scannability and visual impact. Fortunately, Blogger is an old dog I can teach new tricks to, like the setup the tutorial I found presents. A Python code snippet with syntax highlighting rendered by highlights.js in a post of the Moo
Read more