Remap Prev/Next on ThinkPad

October 1, 2022 - 1 min read

I still use my awesome little ThinkPad X200, in fact I now have more of them and even a few X201’s. They are truly the best machines I’ve ever used! :-)

One annoying thing though, when going back to these traditional ThinkPad keyboards is the prev/next keys next to the arrow keys. On modern ones they are PgUp/PgDn and I recently learned how to elegantly remap them in X. Note the difference, below, to the original at ThinkWiki. In the (new) file /usr/share/X11/xkb/compat/thnkpad, add:

default partial xkb_compatibility "basic" {
    interpret.repeat= True;

    interpret XF86Back {
        action = Redirect(Key=<PGUP>);
    };
    interpret XF86Forward {
        action = Redirect(Key=<PGDN>);
    };
};

This may be a new file on your system, so you may need to add it to the list of “augments” to add. Edit /usr/share/X11/xkb/compat/complete so it looks something like this:

default xkb_compatibility "complete" {
    include "basic"
    augment "iso9995"
    augment "mousekeys"
    augment "accessx(full)"
    augment "misc"
    augment "xfree86"
    augment "level5"
    augment "caps(caps_lock)"
    augment "thinkpad"
};

Restart your X window system, or reboot, et voilà! \o/