Those who have tried playing games with social elements on consoles would understand the pain of trying to type with a controller. But sometimes having that option is better than not, and the good news is the option is being tested by Windows Insiders in the form of what is called the gamepad keyboard.
Microsoft has announced the testing of the feature via its blog post for the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.4145. The gamepad keyboard has features like buttons dedicated for the backspace and spacebar, described as button accelerators. Keys have also been vertically aligned for sightly more intuitive navigation on the virtual keyboard.
So overall, the way it looks and is described is just as you’d be familiar with if you were an online gamer on a console without a keyboard. You might be thinking, why would a Windows 11 PC, which most likely has a keyboard, ever need a gamepad keyboard like this? The answer would probably be handheld gaming PCs that run Windows like the ASUS ROG Ally. While they have touchscreens, reaching out to them to type with your thumb like you would a phone would be awkward, to say the least.
While this is probably something most owners of Windows-based handheld PCs can appreciate, there’s no word on when the gamepad keyboard will be available to the general public. Hopefully things go well among the Windows Insider beta testers that it breaks containment sooner rather than later.
(Source: Microsoft)
