Its most common use case is interrupting games

It's an accessibility thing. If you can't press two keys at once, then you can turn it on and press the modifier key, then the active key.

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It would be nice if the default wasn't being on, or it asked during installation or something.

37
- I bet someone who needs it likes that it's on by default.
  
  83
- It asks when you do it the first time lol, although asking at installation might be a better idea
  
  11
- Put it into the notification bar instead of demanding focus. That way its on by default, but doesn't interrupt, and is still easily accessible for those who need it.
  
  3
I usually have it turned off. But I found it kinda useful once that I had a cast in one hand.

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There’s also no reason for a game to inadvertently trigger it. All games should clear the SKF_HOTKEYACTIVE flag on launch to disable the feature trigger during gameplay. Unreal, Unity, and most other engines do this by default.

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I feel slightly less annoyed with life, now that I know this

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And that's all fine and dandy.
If it didn't randomly decide to turn on.

4
- It turns on when you tap shift 5 times in a row. It also has a pop up when it turns on giving you a link to the setting to turn off that behavior. Just turn it off when it happens if you aren't going to use it.
  
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That is actualla good feature then, if you need it for accessibility... But why on earth does it need to prompt you to enable it with such an annoying way? To my knowledge, it's the only accessibility option that agressively advertises itself specifically when you don't want, or need, it to.

More logical behaviour to prompt the enabling would be if a "modifier" key, and "non-modifier" key is pressed in sequence, but not at the same time. As the assumption of sticky keys is that the user is not able to press two buttons down simultaneously.

That said, it is likely that a person who has need for this feature, but is not aware of it's excistence, would not use other modifiers than shift, as they are needed exclusively for hotkeys, which is on the far end of the learning curve (as mouse, and right klick are more apparent to learn), and if such feature is needed, it's excistence is apparent at the time you start to use the systems via hotkeys. Instead, if you hammer shift repeatedly while typing, it indicates that you light benefit from tjis feature. Thus only requiring detection of the writing cursor being active, which is already possible, because there is an accessibility feature to highlight that. I know this, because a fresh install of windows suggests that you go trough accesdibility on first startup.

Sorry, I know you're not developing Windows UI (but what do I know, if you did), but I kindawanted to rant a bit about such an apparent solution to a problem that has plagued from Win 3.11 at least.

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Sticky keys is it so that when you press the modifier keys (control, shift, alt/option and win/meta/super/command), you won't need to hold them in order to activate a keyboard shortcut.

It's an accessibility feature designed to make it easier for people who may have trouble using a keyboard to activate keyboard shortcuts.

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As a tetraplegic person, sticky keys are my lifesaver. I can only push one button at a time on my keyboard. Thanks to sticky keys, I can write grammatically correct and use key combinations.

That's what sticky keys is made for. Normally, it shouldn't be active on default though, on my computers it never was. I always had to turn it on.

60

The shortcut to activate them is active by default and windows will display a notification when you press shift 5 times (I think) asking you about it. That happens a lot when you play some games.

Easy enough to turn off the notification though. So not sure what OP is fussing about.

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- For me, it's a one time annoyance each time I setup a new computer or reformat mine. I never think about it till the shortcut triggers, and then I disable it. Not world ending, but kinda annoying, and less tech savvy won't know or realize they can disable it despite it saying so in the popup. But I'd be more satisfied if the notice to turn it on would just pop into the notification bar instead of an interrupting popup that must be addressed to return to what you were doing. Sure, let us know about it, but don't pull us out of what we're doing. I in general hate any feature that interrupts your work to make you interact with it instead unless it is extremely critical, and this notification is not.
  
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It isn't on by default, but pressing shift I think 5 times fast in a row is a shortcut not even to turn it on, but to display a pop-up asking you if you want to turn it on.

You can disable that though. However it still seems like something that shouldn't be happening by default, since no one is going to want to use it without knowing about it, and at that point opt-in seems better with how easy it is to do accidentally.

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- The thing about accessibility features is that they need to be accessible.
  
  It is much easier for a regular person to disable them than for a disabled or old person to enable them.
  
  16

Fun fact: A common way to get access to SYSTEM (higher than admin) privileges on Windows is the sethc exploit, where you replace sethc (the program that shows the sticky keys dialog) with command prompt, and it gets started as SYSTEM, the only thing needed is write access to System32, which can either be from an admin account or by editing the file system externally. This also allows opening a command prompt on the login screen, allowing some cursed things, like if you start explorer.exe on the login screen it combines the desktop and login screen.

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I used to do this to make a hidden account on my computer to bypass my parents' screen time restrictions

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- smort
  
  7
I did this in college with windows 7. I don't think it works on 10, but could be mistaken.

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- I helped an elderly man get back into his pc doing a variation of this.
  
  Changed the accessibility magnifier function to comman prompt. Was able to log in and create another user account after he lost access to a password.
  
  So not sure about that one specifically bit a variation worked on 10.
  
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- It worked in win10 a few years ago when I was working in IT...
  
  9
- Ive done it on 10 before
  
  2
That's a common way to reset password for the accounts, among osk.exe file replacement

7

Is this a windows joke I'm too linux to understand?

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Yes if you hold "shift" for 5 seconds, it will attempt to turn on sticky keys, which makes individual key strokes act like if you were holding them down. Individually pressing ctrl, alt, del with sticky keys is like pressing ctrl+alt+del

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- Correction because I'm annoying: it's when you press shift 5 times in a row. It would be terrible if just holding it down for 5 seconds activated it, haha
  
  46
KDE has an option to enable them if you want.

8
- So does xfce.
  
  1
Its a rite of passage for any computer with a freshly installed windows

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Was going to say, I don't remember seeing this anytime recently, then remembered I've been daily driving Linux for like 5 years, lol.

5
Is Linux so bad that it doesn't have accessibility options?

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Permanently Deleted

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Sorry I can't read. Can you just tell us?

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- It's an accessibly feature for those who can't hold down shift and the key they want to have in uppercase (or the variant, like the exclamation point).
  
  It's useful for less computer savvy people or those with muscular issues (and for Tom, who fucking insists using his tongue to type is more hygienic (it's decidedly not))
  
  12
- It has no purpose other than fucking with you and there's no way to turn it off
  
  -10

I can’t remember the last time I had a sticky keys issue.

However, Win10 randomly deciding to background/minimize my game for absolutely no reason is definitely a thing. Nothing like having to alt-tab back into your game to find yourself dead when you stopped moving in the middle of a firefight.

28

File explorer just casually says hello during a full screen game and overrides the active window.

One of the reasons I use linux now. Now I get to break absolutely everything if I'm not careful.

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- "Let me just install this mouse driver while trying not wreck my audio driver…“
  
  "Aaand I’ve broken 28 pixels“
  
  8
Never happens to me, but I also have a keyboard that let's you deactivate the Windows and Tab keys. I have them deactivated at all times and alt+tab on my second keyboard.

3

Tell me OP is 14 years old without telling me OP is 14 years old.

23

Would you like to enable sticky keys?

22

Pio piao peeoop

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Gah, no! I'm never going to want to. Stop asking.

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- Hope you never get arthritis when you're old.
  
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As someone who has had shitty laptop keyboards with fucked up keyboards. I got some actual use out of the feature throughout the years and I have to say it's quite nice.

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Well, for anyone who can't hold multiple keys at once for any reason. If they are unable to hold CTRL and shift at the same time from hand injuries or something then that's what the sticky keys are for.

17

A similar thing I've run into where a feature that usually wouldn't get activated much gets in the way because of games making you input weird patterns is the Windows language swap hotkey, alt-shift. I play a game that uses alt and shift a lot, and involves quite a bit of typing, so I kept getting confused why my language was suddenly different. Took me ages to find out why.

10

If you just make sure to only have a single keyboard layout in the settings, it doesn't have any other layouts it can switch to.

I don't get why you'd need multiple layouts, don't you just have one keyboard connected to your computer?

But yeah, just disable the hotkey.

1
- I need multiple layouts because I'm bilingual.
  
  1
Yeah, it's annoying. I use Dvorak but some games don't detect that (a lot of respect to those that do detect it because my qwerty typing isn't very efficient anymore, if I do need to type in addition to game input) and it's easier to switch to qwerty than rebind everything, so I don't want to disable it.

Though if you don't use the other languages, you can remove them from your list. Do a search to find it, MS likes to move this option around so I don't know offhand where it is right now, but if you only have one language/layout, the key combo does nothing. You can also change the hotkeys.

1
- I need the other languages, instead I disabled the hotkey to swap.
  
  2

I don't know that there's a point to them, so much as I just lose all motivation and fall straight to sleep after finishing my porn sessions.

9

Can someone finally explain to me what sticky keys mean?

7

You know how when you press the caps button on your phone keyboard, it Capitalizes the next character you type? It's that, but on a physical keyboard. Normally you have to hold the shift key, but stickykeys lets you just tap it.

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- So caps lock?
  
  9

It helps in Minecraft by holding the mouse button for you while you dig straight down into magma.

4