What are the restrictions of hotkeys without an activation keybind?

[GaussianWonder]

1. What are the restrictions of hotkeys without an activation keybind?

   I want to be able to hold down the meta key and press 1, 2, [, { (...) and have the keybinds still function. Doing this with keychords is somewhat slower than I am used to on linux WMs.

I am aware of windows having hard coded and unchangeable keybinds that start with the windows key. I tried swapping my meta key with F13-F24 keys, but the global hotkeys cannot be set.

2. Is it a windows restriction? Does it programmatically not allow you to set shortcuts without the Shift, Control, Alt or Windows as part of the shortcut?

[veselink1]

Before FancyWM 2.12, it used to use the Win32 RegisterHotkey function, and inherited it's restrictions.

64297c5

As of 2.12, it now uses its own hot key implementation, which reuses the LowLevelHotkey used by the ActivationHotkey.

The new implementation technically allows you to bind what you want, but I believe the Settings UI will not capture the Windows key when configuring (as it does not use the LowLevel implementation during input capture yet). You can try editing the settings.json.