Handy Buttons

Handy buttons are single purpose input devices built to trigger the Handy shortcut. They can be extremely fun and made out of virtually anything that you can stick a microcontroller and a button in. Off the shelf hardware can also be repurposed to be a Handy Button. Get creative, have some fun, and make your own speech text button!

Make your own Handy Button

The main idea behind a Handy Button is to make a keyboard input device and have it press the keyboard shortcut you want. This sounds quite complicated at first, and to some degree it is, fortunately The DIY mechanical keyboard community makes this a lot easier for us generally with good documentation through that community.

You’ll need a few main things:

• A thing you want to turn into a button
• A microcontroller that supports QMK/ZMK or similar keyboard firmware
• The firmware itself
• A switch of some sort to act as the button

In the future we may evolve into having a more full guide how to do this, however for now check out the existing handy buttons and their writeups for more info!

Gallery

Below are some Handy Buttons made by the community.

Submit your button to contact@handy.computer

Handy M0100

CJ turned a vintage apple mouse (M0100) into a Handy Button.

‘Footy’ Foot Pedal

CJ made a 3D printed foot pedal ‘Footy’ which is a Handy Button.