Currently, only Pixel-branded Chrome OS devices have a dedicated Google Assistant hardware key, which of course, launch the Assistant, which is now native. Since November 2017, however, users have requested that Google allow this key to be remapped. And as of this month, Google is working to make this change.
Chrome Story first spotted the Chromium code commit, which coincides with this 15-month old feature request. Note that you can currently remap a number of hardware keys on any Chromebook, just not the Assistant key. To remap a key, just click Settings, Keyboard to customize either the Launcher, Ctrl, Alt, Escape or Backspace keys. You can also type this link in your browser to get directly to the setting: chrome://settings/device
Why might people want to remap the Assistant key? Essentially because there’s no “super” key like Windows and macOS computers have, as one of the comments in the feature request points out:
This feature would add polish for Crostini, as people try to run apps within containers that expect a “Windows” or “Super” key to work.
I use Linux apps in Crostini every day for coding, but I use a graphical integrated development environment. Devs that work in terminal-style apps often want to rebind or remap certain keys to help their workflow, which I can completely understand. This would be a very welcome feature for those use cases.
