Hey everyone, today I’m going to be showing you how to use the VIA configurator
to configure your custom mechanical keyboards. VIA is an extension of QMK,
which lets you customize your keyboards by remapping keys, settings macros,
and change lighting settings. The main benefit of using VIA over QMK is that it
has a much nicer UI and all the updates happen live without the need of flashing your keyboard.
To download VIA, you’ll need to go to caniusevia.com.
Then, once you’re on the home page, click on the download link.
There are different downloads for different operating systems. We have a Mac.dmg file for Macs
and a win.exe for windows. I’ll be downloading the Mac version since that’s the OS that I’m using.
Once the download is finished,
this window will popup asking you to drag the VIA app into your applications folder.
Once that’s done, you can go ahead and close out of this and try to open the VIA app.
You may receive this security warning like this one when you try to open VIA for the first time.
That can be fixed by opening system preferences and going to the Security and Privacy tab.
Once you’re there, you’ll see the message that says “VIA was blocked from use because
it is not from an identified developer”. Just go ahead and click open anyways and confirm.
Now that we have VIA up and running, you can see it automatically detected
my keyboard and shows the layout with key mappings as well as the name of the PCB here.
There are 3 main tabs: configure, key tester, and settings. I’ll start with the key
tester first since it’s pretty self explanatory. You can use this to make sure all the keys on
your board work properly. You can click on this button down here to reset the screen.
Here are the settings. There aren’t really a lot of things
that can be changed. I just leave them as is.
Now let’s get on to actually configuring your keyboard. The flow is pretty simple. All you do is
click on the key you want to reassign and select what you want to reassign it to. So I can click
on the T key and reassign it to the Home key or I can change it to num lock. Pretty simple stuff.
In terms of available key mappings there are a ton of options and esctions. For the basic tab,
you’ll find all the keys you would normally find on a standard keyboard.
There’s the media tab, to control playback like volume, play/pause, skip/rewind, etc.
Macros we’ll get to in a little bit.
You’ve got layers, which allow you to control which layer you’re currently on.
It looks pretty confusing, but if you hover over any of the mappings, you’ll see a description
of what it does down here at the bottom. Pretty self explanatory when you read the descriptions.
We’ve got specials, where you can find some of the common shortcuts and actions.
There are keys to change your language, multi function keys, cut, copy, paste, and things
like that. Extra function keys… You can do a mouse click or scroll the mouse wheel… Certain items are
specific to the operating system, so make sure the action you select actually works on your computer.
And finally, we have the QMK lighting section. You can set mappings to turn your
lights on or off, change the lighting mode, colors, brightness, and so on.
Now let’s get on to assigning macros.
You’ll see there’s a macros tab here, and I already have one configured. This macro
is to lock screen on a Mac. It’s made up of left gui, which is the windows/command key,
left control which is left control,
and kc_q which is just the q key. If you want all of them to be pressed at the same time,
just enclose them in brackets like you see here. Once you’re finished, you can click save.
Macros can also type out some text. Additionally, you have the option here
to tap enter at the end of your macro, so if you don’t value your security,
you can set a macro that types in your password and presses enter so you can log in quicker.
Now to actually set your macros, we need to go back to the key map.
I like to assign my macros on layer 1 for small boards.
Layer 0 is the default layer and layer 1 activates when you hold down the function key.
Then, it all works the same as any other mapping. You select the key you want
reassigned and then choose the macro. I’ve already assigned this to macro 0
and this to macro 1. If you remember, macro 0 was to lock my screen
and macro 1 was to output my password and press enter.
One of the benefits of using VIA is that all your key mappings are updated instantly.
You can see we are looking at layer 0, and if I check the Q key,
it looks normal. So if I press the Q key on my board, it types out Q, which we expect.
If we go back, and now reassign it to another key,
like A, and then start pressing the Q key, it should already be updated and start typing A.
Now, let’s check out one last feature that is unique to certain boards.
I’ve got my NK65 plugged in now, as you can see on the top right.
And then now, the layout also matches the NK65 and it has the extra column on the right.
The key map assignments are all pretty much the same.
You have basic, lighting, media, macros, layers, special… Lighting says Lighting
instead of QMK lighting and the labels are different, but it all works the same.
One special thing about this board vs my tofu is
that you see there’s a new tab on the top left for lighting.
Currently, my keyboard has no lights on and the current effect is all off. I can choose
a different mode and my board will actually update instantly. I can choose solid color…
And then I can click on the box to open up the color picker and choose
any color and they’ll all update in real time.
If you do something with multiple colors like this one,
you’ll have separate color pickers for each portion.
as well.
Now, we have advanced, which will let you change some other special settings. You can disable leds
when USB is suspended…, you can choose to have your leds go to sleep after a certain time…
You can also change the color of your whole board as an indicator.
If I turn caps lock on, the top right of the board has a blue light. If I turn this on,
the whole board lights up in a different color. Same thing happens for the layer 1 indicator.
Same options for layer 2 and layer 3.
Anyways, that’s how to install and use the VIA configurator. If you found this video helpful,
please consider leaving a like on the video and also consider subscribing to
my channel. It really helps me out. Have a nice day and I’ll see you in the next video.