eclipse-theia/theia

[Keymaps] Feature Request : Capture physical keystrokes for keybindings instead of manual text entry

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#17194 opened on Mar 19, 2026

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enhancementhelp wantedkeybindings

Description

Feature Description: The Current State: Currently, when a user wants to assign or change a keybinding in the Keyboard Shortcuts widget, they are required to manually type out the exact string representation of the keys (e.g., typing out "Ctrl+Alt+P"). This introduces UX friction for developers customizing their workspace and leaves room for syntax typos.

The Proposed Enhancement: If there are no hard technical blockers, it would significantly reduce UX friction to adopt a keystroke listener prompt (similar to VS Code and other modern IDEs). When clicking the edit icon, a prompt would say "Press desired key combination and then press Enter", and the UI would capture the physical keyboard events to format the string automatically.

Discussion / Context: I wanted to open a discussion to ask: Was this manual text-entry approach an intentional design choice (perhaps to support complex multi-chord sequences or due to historical browser event constraints), or is this simply an area of the UI that hasn't been updated yet?

I noticed this while testing my recent PR for the widget activation lifecycle (#17088). If the core team agrees this is a valuable enhancement and there are no historical reasons keeping it as text-only, I would be very interested in exploring a PR to implement a keystroke listener!

Contributor guide

Tech stack
typescriptelectron
Domain
developer experience
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Knowledge of keyboard eventsTheia extension development basics
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
65
Research direction
Examine the Keyboard Shortcuts widget implementation in the Theia source code, focusing on the edit flow that currently requires manual text entry. Review linked PR #17088 for context on the widget activation lifecycle. Investigate how other IDEs like VS Code capture keystrokes. Consider implementing a keystroke listener that temporarily intercepts keyboard input and formats the key combination string. Check comments for any design constraints or preferences from maintainers.