zmk two hand hold down
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I don't know about you, but I don't re-flash my keyboard enough to ever remember where I put the bootloader. Sometimes its the last thing I think about in a...

Date: September 17, 2025

I don’t know about you, but I don’t re-flash my keyboard enough to ever remember where I put the bootloader. Sometimes its the last thing I think about in a refactor and I end up cornering myself into a place where I cant get into that layer anymore. I’ve started putting hardware switches on my newer builds, but some older builds don’t have a hardware one, so it requires disassembly and jumping the microcontroller. Even when I have one though, I gotta flip my board over and its annoying sometimes, so I prefer to have a keystroke for it.

Two Hand hold down
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What I’ve landed on recently is the idea of a two hand hold down combo for the bootloader. These combos are ones that there is no way I can hit without picking my hands up from their normal homerow position and pressing four keys simultaneously with pointer and thumbs.

Here are some example layouts from keymap-editor <https://nickcoutsos.github.io/keymap-editor/>

Image: screenshot-2025-09-17T01-06-16-427Z.png <https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/fd4d31aa-b151-4bce-b411-8e4480898b83.png>

│ 40% layout - similar to corne

Image: screenshot-2025-09-17T01-05-02-298Z.png <https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/74626408-cb1e-43bd-8c4c-7fb2abb16ea2.png>

│ Here it is on my Son’s 3x5 macropad

Image: screenshot-2025-09-17T01-05-30-687Z.png <https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/8afdd2cd-c362-40cb-b9ef-9cd70ba4b0cb.png>

│ Here it is on my 3x3 macropad

Timing
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You can even give it a long prior timeout to really make sure that its not an accidental hit.

Image: screenshot-2025-09-17T01-10-22-100Z.png <https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/4a0c7dc0-f096-4be2-9b4d-e89cb787179a.png>