Last week I made a video going over customizing the lighting in iCUE version 4
and for those now wanting some help with what Corsair is now calling 'Key Assignments'...
well... you know... you saw the video title... so uh yah, we're gonna go over that in this video.
In order to make key assignments we first need to create a profile to associate those key
assignments with. So the first thing we're going to do is click on the Profile menu drop down here
in the upper left of our iCUE window and click on this big plus sign to create a new profile.
ICUE is all about customization so even here you can choose one of these icons to represent your
profile, click on this paint bucket and choose a color or come back and click on this plus sign and
use any picture you want that you have on your PC. To keep things simple for this video though, I'm
just going to pick this green one. In this field we can give our profile a name. Let's say you want
this profile to have some custom key assignments for your favorite game; so let's name it that.
Here we can choose an image or video to use as a background in the iCUE window and lastly
clicking on this big plus sign here, we can link our profile to
an application. So since this profile is a custom layout for your favorite game we can
link the executable file for that game to this profile here
so that when we launch our game iCUE will automatically switch to our custom profile for us.
With our new profile created we can now start making custom key assignments. I don't want
this video to be super long and I'm sure you don't either so I'm going to go over a few
of the different key assignments to show you how iCUE works and then it'll be up to you to
use that basic knowledge to make whatever custom key assignments you want to make.
I'm going to start by clicking on my Corsair keyboard here and then click on
Key Assignments here on the left. To add a new assignment we'll first click on this plus sign,
and here are the different assignment options we have. There's two different categories,
Remap and Regular. Under Remap we have Keystroke, Language Keys, Mouse and then
Keyboard. Keystroke allows us to remap a key or series or key presses on our keyboard or mouse to
any key or mouse button of our choosing. You just click in this field here and then either
press the key you want to assign on your keyboard itself or click it in the GUI up here.
In the field to the right you then press the key or keystroke you want that key to be remapped to,
and uh... that's it. You can also click on Advanced here and toggle this option
on which has the key retain it's original output in addition to executing your custom keystroke.
The Language Keys remap I'm not familiar with at all because I've never messed with
that so if that's something you wanna do you're going to have to figure that out on your own.
Mouse allows us to assign a mouse button function to a key on our keyboard and then Keyboard
allows us to remap any key on our keyboard to function as any other key on our keyboard.
For example if I wanted to use left CTRL as a space bar I can click on this question mark block,
press control and then select the key I want it to function as here. In this case the space bar.
In the Advanced tab we can once again choose to retain the original key output on top of executing
our new function as well as have a single press imitate holding that key down. In this drop down
that appears we can then choose to have it act as a toggle, meaning it will act as if you're
pressing the key until you press it again or using ;On Keypress; we can set it to imitate holding the
key for a certain amount of time which we can specify in this field. This is a nice
feature for games where you have to hold a key to open a door or search an object or whatever.
Under the Regular category we first have Text, which allows us to type out a message
of some kind and assign it to a key so that when we want to have that message typed
out in game chat or something all you have to do is hit your assigned key and that message will be
instantly typed out. In the advanced tab there's a lot of additional options that go
along with this, one of them being adding a delay between character inputs
to make it look like you're typing it I guess; but I'll let you play around with
those if that's something you're interested in. For now I would like to keep moving.
Media is a tool to reassign keys on your keyboard to act as media control keys so you can pause,
play, skip forward or backward and turn the volume up and down while you're listening to music
or watching videos on your computer. Launch App basically lets you create hot keys to launch your
favorite applications as well as some commonly used Windows applications like a web browser and
one of my favorites, the calculator. So instead of double clicking an icon on your desktop or looking
it up in your Windows Start Menu you can simply press a single key on your keyboard and that
application will launch. Disable does exactly what you would think it does. It renders whatever key
with that assignment inoperable. If you don't want it disabled all the time though
you can toggle this radio button to only disable it if the Windows Lock button is on which is a
nice option to have available. Next on the list is Profile Switching. I use this key assignment
on my Strafe Keyboard so I can switch from one profile to another quickly and easily.
You can choose to have whatever key you assign it to switch directly to a particular profile
or have it cycle through a list of profiles you choose which is the option I prefer to
use. I then like to hit this option here to copy this assignment to all the profiles on
the list so then no matter which profile I'm using my profile switching key works.
And with that we are on to our final Key Assignment option, Macro. For those of you that
want to use this feature I assume you already know what a Macro is. But for those that don't know,
a macro is a way to assign a series of button presses to a single button press. In some games
you have to press a few different keys to execute an attack or cast a spell or something else.
Creating a macro is a great way to simplify things and make you faster and more efficient. To create
a macro in iCUE 4 you first want to click on the question mark box here and then choose the
key you want to be the trigger for your macro. For this example I'm going to assign mine to
the E key. Now I'm going to come over here to the General tab and we have some different options we
can turn on and off. If we don't want any delays between our key presses we can toggle this off.
We of course want to record all keyboard events which is just the keys we press while recording
our Macro and then I also want to turn mouse clicks on because I want my macro to end with a
left mouse click. This way all I'll have to do is point the mouse where I want to execute my macro
and then press the key on my keyboard and iCUE will take care of all the rest.
I'll now go back to the recording tab, click the record button here and start inputting my macro.
I'm first going to type the E key and then F and end with a left click. I'll then stop
the recording and oh... it recorded that mouse click too. I guess that's not a bad thing though,
it gives me an opportunity to show you what to do if you record something you didn't want to record.
Each event here has these 3 little dots by it, so I'm going to click on this one and
it brings up the options for that event. I can add an event above or below, edit the event,
copy the event or delete it which is what I want to do. Now let's delete this mouse click event and
there that's our macro. Now when I press the E key on my keyboard that macro will play. Just in case
you're wondering this isn't for any real game I'm just making something up to show you how to do it.
There's also the 3 little dots here that allow you to do some other things like add other events,
aka key presses to your macro, add a delay between events, delete delays between events and if your
macro is all messed up and you just need to start over you an delete all events here and start over
fresh. In the advanced tab we can choose to retain the original key output, change when our action is
triggered, whether to repeat the action or not and give the macro a 2nd assignment. So yah,
you can create another macro and then link it to your first macro here so it will execute both of
them one right after the other. You then also have the option to assign a sound effect to play on
your PC when you use your macro as well as have a custom lighting effect play on your keyboard.
Crap! This video is already longer than I was wanting it to be. Well then I guess it's good that
I'm done talking about everything then isn't it. I really hope this video was helpful to you. That
it helped familiarize you with the iCUE interface and gave you the confidence that you need to start
trying things out and set up your own custom key assignments. I know most of you have already left
by now but those of you that are still watching, there's those YouTube things you can do that
really help a lot and there's also a link to my Amazon store in the video description where you
can check out many of the products I feature in my videos, like the Corsair Strafe RGB keyboard
I used in this video. Thank you so much, have a great day and we'll see you in the next one.