I do have a Keychron K2v1 keyboard (with dampened Blue Switches, to preempt questions), which is nice to type on and portable and all that. But the backlight always has been majorly annoying. You can imagine my elation when I discovered that their latest firmware update was supposed to add new features to address that.

Fun with VirtualBox

The Mac Firmware Updater is not signed and the “manufacturers recommendation” is to use a tool to forgo the Mac GateKeeper. Counter proposal: Why can’t you properly notarize your binaries?

Back to the Windows VM it is. While last time I was shocked to see all the “Privacy Options” being asked while setting up Windows, now I was surprised that Microsoft now has forced online activation.

Fuck you Microsoft! Quickly removed the network interface from the VM, waited the Network detection to fail and boom, Local Windows Account for my throwaway VM!

I used to use Edge to download the required things directly in the VM. But without a network interface that is not possible and VirtualBox’s shared folders seemingly rely on that connectivity, too. Drag’n’drop then it is; for which the guest additions need to be installed.

There is a handy Arch package for that: virtualbox-guest-iso. Once installed, the ISO can be mounted into the Guest from the following location:

/usr/lib/virtualbox/additions/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso

Keychron K2

Now that the VM is set up and I was able to go on with the update. This was the 3rd firmware update I did for this keyboard and as you can see from the past changelog entries, each update brought actual new functionality.

But the light mode setting still remains ridiculous. On the original Firmware you would accidentally hit the light button in the top right corner, it would go into Christmas Tree Mode and force you to cycle all the way back through the various different light effects.

How hard can this be? All you need is: Lights off, Lights on, and perhaps a half brightness setting for dark-ish rooms.

With the latest Firmware, Light Lock is available which partly solves the issue, but in a weird way: When the lock is activated the light effect and the light state is locked. So you can either lock the light while turned off and it will permanently stay off, or you set it while the solid light effect is on, resulting in your keyboard light to always be on without the option to turn it off. Granted, you can always remove the lock again (if you happen to remember the combination) but in my opinion Light Lock is more of a set-and-forget type of thing.

Wrap Up

Had to jump through various hoops to get it to update in the first place, and even then it only partially solves the annoying issues.

I really wish I had held out longer buying the keyboard back then, because the newer Keychron Keyboards now come with a full-blown QMK firmware, which allows fine-grained customisations.

Plus, I’m stoked to find out what hoops to jump through Microsoft comes up with next, to to make using Windows harder.