You Can Remap the “Copilot” Key on Your PC to a Really Useful Function.
If you bought a Windows computer in the last couple of years, there’s a good chance the Ctrl key is now replaced by the “Copilot” key. But what if you actually use the correct Ctrl key? Or what if you prefer Claude or ChatGPT to Copilot? Whatever the reason you don’t like the Copilot key, don’t worry—you can change it. Here’s how to do it in Windows settings or, if necessary, using Microsoft Powertoys.
How to change the “Co-Pilot” key in the settings
Open the Settings app and go to Personalization . Here, you’ll find the “Customize the Copilot key” option if you’re using a relatively new version of Windows 11. Click the drop-down menu, and you’ll have three options: Copilot, Search, and Custom. You can change the button to “Search” if you prefer to use the key to launch the Windows search tool instead of Copilot.
Alternatively, you can use the “Custom” option to launch any application on your computer instead of Copilot. This can be a useful way to open desktop apps like Claude or ChatGPT instead of Copilot. Or, if you’re not a big fan of AI, you can simply configure it to open your browser.
Of course, there are only a few options, but it’s simple and doesn’t require any tools. This is the easiest option.
How to Change a Copilot Key Using Microsoft PowerToys
You may have noticed that you can’t remap the Copilot key to Ctrl or any other key in the settings—all you can do is launch the app. To do that, you’ll need to install Powertoys , a secret Microsoft app that improves Windows performance .
After installation, go to the “Keyboard Manager” section. The easiest way to do this (though it may or may not work on your computer) is to click “Remap Keys.” You’ll be able to press the Copilot key to remap it (it will appear as F23, which we’ll get to later). Now you can choose what this key will be used for. It can be Ctrl, if you prefer, or any other key. Click “OK,” and you’re done.
Chances are, this won’t work for you. Why? Because the Copilot key works slightly differently depending on your laptop model. Brace yourself: this is where things get very complicated, in typical Microsoft fashion.
On many computers, the Copilot key functions as the F23 key. This is a workaround that allows Microsoft to add the key without significant changes to the operating system. Most modern keyboards have only one row of function keys—about 12 of them. Keyboards from the 80s and 90s sometimes had two rows of keys—about 24. Windows still supports all 24 keys, although almost no other computer has that many function keys. Microsoft took advantage of this—on many laptops, the Copilot key functions as the F23 key.
But this is Windows, so of course, things are more complicated. On some laptops, pressing the Copilot key triggers the keyboard shortcut: Windows-Shift-F23. This means you can’t use the key remapping feature in Powertoys to remap the Copilot key, because the Copilot key already triggers the keyboard shortcut.
You can use the ” Remap Keyboard Shortcut ” feature. Click it, then select the Copilot key. The keyboard shortcut should display: Windows-Shift-F23 . Now select the key you want to remap the Copilot key to.
This works, but with one caveat: you can’t actually use this to restore the Ctrl key, as users on Github have noted . The problem is that you can’t remap a keyboard shortcut to a modifier key, only to a single keystroke. It’s unclear what could fix this, and I suspect users of such laptops are simply stumped. All this suggests that you may not be able to restore the Ctrl key, but at least you can remap it to something else.