Microsoft has been pushing Copilot very hard recently, with its rebranding of Bing Chat into it, and its introduction to Windows 10 as well as Android and iOS apps. To show that the company is serious with its generative AI push, it is adding a new key just for the feature to Windows 11 PC keyboards.
From the announcement, it is not exactly clear where the is new Copilot key will be. That being said, judging from the image and embedded video, it looks to be replacing the menu key, or what some would call the right-click key. In the same vein, it probably won’t be something that Microsoft will force onto its partners, just as many keyboards found in the market today don’t feature the menu key.
Speaking of which, Microsoft says that “you will start to see the Copilot key on many of the new Windows 11 PCs from our ecosystem partners”, with availability starting in late February. No mention of any specific names, but the company’s own Surface machines will more than likely sport the key than third parties.
If for whatever reason a machine with this Copilot key doesn’t actually have the feature, or if it is not enabled, the key will instead be used to launch Windows Search. Which does sound pretty redundant as you can already do that with the Windows key itself. It also remains to be seen if this new key can be used in combination with others for shortcuts. And if it does replace the menu key, then those who have gotten used to it will have to go back to using Shift + F10.
(Source: Microsoft)
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