How to remap the Copilot key on Windows 11 to something you'll use

Since 2024, most new Windows laptops and many keyboards ship with a Copilot key, usually where the right Ctrl or menu key used to be. Pressed, it opens Microsoft’s Copilot app. Some people use it every day. Many never press it on purpose and lose a Ctrl key they used to rely on.

Windows 11 lets you change what that key does. Here is how, and what to do with it.

The built-in setting

On recent Windows 11 builds:

1. Open Settings → Personalization → Text input (on some builds the option sits under keyboard settings).
2. Find Customize Copilot key on keyboard.
3. Choose Search, or Custom and pick an app.

Microsoft documented this option as it rolled out; the exact location has moved between builds, so search Settings for “Copilot key” if you do not see it. The custom option has historically been limited to apps that meet certain packaging requirements, such as signed, packaged apps (for example from the Microsoft Store).

Using PowerToys instead

PowerToys Keyboard Manager can remap keys and shortcuts more flexibly. The Copilot key sends a key combination rather than a single unique key code (commonly reported as Win + Shift + F23), so remapping it means mapping that shortcut to something else, such as a right Ctrl key or another shortcut.

Two notes:

• Keyboard Manager remaps only while PowerToys is running.
• Some games and elevated apps ignore remaps.

Good uses for a spare key

A single key with no modifiers is a valuable thing. Ideas:

• Right Ctrl, if you miss it for shortcuts.
• A quick-capture shortcut. Map the key to Ctrl + Shift + J (or your capture tool’s shortcut) and you have a one-key “write this down” button.
• Mute/unmute in your meeting app.
• A launcher, such as PowerToys Command Palette. See PowerToys Command Palette and quick capture.
• Screenshot to clipboard.

Why not register the key directly?

People sometimes ask why apps do not just let you bind “the Copilot key” as a hotkey. Because of the way the key reports itself, binding it directly can be unreliable across keyboards and builds. Mapping it to a normal shortcut that the app already supports is more predictable.

Also, a bare key as a global hotkey is something Jot deliberately refuses to register for ordinary keys: it would swallow that key in every other app. A remapped dedicated key is the exception that makes sense, because you never needed it for typing. See choosing a global hotkey.

If you do use Copilot

Then keep it. The same Settings page lets you switch back. The point is that a key you press a hundred times a day should do the thing you do a hundred times a day.

Jot is on the Microsoft Store and its shortcut can be rebound in Settings if you want to pair it with a remapped key.

Jot is a quick-capture app for Windows: one hotkey, one line, back to what you were doing. What it is, or what is still unproven.