Hands Down on

My personal ZMK take on Hands Down on small portable boards.

Hands Down Vibranium-Vf

╭─────────────────────╮ ╭──────────────────────╮
│  X   W   M   G   J  │ │  #$  .:  /*  "<  '>  │
│  S   C   N   T   K  | |  ,;   A   E   I   H  │
│  F   P   L   D   V  │ │  -+   U   O   Y   B  │
╰──────╮  App BSP  R  │ │  SPC RET nLk  ╭──────╯
       ╰──────────────╯ ╰───────────────╯

Hands Down Promethium

╭─────────────────────╮ ╭──────────────────────╮
│  V   W   G   M   J  │ │  #$  .:  /*  "<  '>  │
│  S   N   T   H   K  | |  ,;   A   E   I   C  │
│  F   P   D   L   X  │ │  -+   U   O   Y   B  │
╰──────╮  App BSP  R  │ │  SPC RET nLk  ╭──────╯
       ╰──────────────╯ ╰───────────────╯

Hands Down variations

HD variation	Thumb Alpha[1]	H-Digraphs[2]	Adaptives[3]	Vim[4]	Avail?
Promethium	R			✔	✔
Rhodium	R				✔
Titanium	R	✔	✔		✔
Vibranium (Vf,Vb,Vx,Vv)	R	✔	✔		✔
Neu	—		✔
Gold	T	✔	✔

^[1] Requires split keyboard with at least 2 thumb keys per side.
^[2] H-digraph combos (TH,CH,WH,SH,GH,PH bigrams) are expected in the design of this layout. It can be used without the H-digraph combos, but that would add more burden to the H-pinky. Layouts not designed expecting the H-digraphs can still work with them, and they are defined in the configuration files.
^[3] Adaptive Keys are recommended to further improve an already great layout (removing more SFBs, scissors, etc.). WM becomes LM, GM/MG -> GL/LG (*Magic keys are a type of Adaptive, restricted to one key. I have, effectivey, many *Magic keys at strategic locations around the keyboard.) Adaptives use urob's slick behavior-adaptive-key module.
^[4] Vim Friendly variations were designed with VIM in mind, especially the navigation letters. Other layouts can work with VIM, especially with a separate nav layer.

• Many combos for less-used letters (Qu,Z,) editing (Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Tab, etc.), symbols and punctuation (@,!,?,;,:,= etc.).

• Comma Magic is very snappy way of using Adaptive Keys to eliminate the shift misfires with home row mods. Simply type COMMA immediately before an alpha to capitalize it (deleting the comma). Linger/Hold on comma for CapsLk, Double-tap comma for CAPS_WORD. It doesn't require a dedicated key for all this. It just works by exploiting a well-established pattern in how a comma is used, never immediatly preceding a letter. It's nearly perfect.

• Linger Keys (via hold-tap behaviors and macros) for things like paired symbols like {([<>])} and diacritics éèôåō, and more.

Currently building only for Mac only (hard coded for gui instead of ctrl, and some Mac specific keycodes), because I use this mainly with my iPads and phone when I'm on the road. My Semantic Keys feature for platform independence works on my QMK implementations, but isn't yet fully fleshed out and will require more invasive work for ZMK, so this is for later. I'll probably deal with this with a separate platform layer and macro parameters…this will take time. I'm stupid busy currently.

Keyboards & form-factors:

• Ahokore (Sweet unibody 3x5+3 from down under)
• Bad Wings Slim (Wafer thin unsplit 3x5+3)
• Corne-ish Zen (Sublime portable split 3x5+3)
• Dust (Bad Wings re-split 3x5+3)
• Kyria (3x5+5)
• Microdox (3x5+3)
• Naked48 (Like Planck, 4x12 but wide)
• Zaphod (Peak unibody 3x5+2 at the end of the world)

Select any HD alpha layout by editing just one line.

Thanks:

• Of course, huge thanks to Pete Johanson and contributors for ZMK (why not consider sponsoring Pete?)
• and for the exquisite Zaphod board design.
• urob for the excellent behavior-adaptive-key module.
• jcmkk3 for the idea to implement adaptives via sticky layers that worked until proper solutions were made.
• many others on the Hands Down Discord for the endless creativity and support.
• Darryldh (lowprokb) for the sublime Corne-ish Zen board.
• Also thanks to caksoylar/Bravekarma on the ZMK Discord for the great keymap visualization tool, keymap drawer used to make the keymap images below, and a lot of help with some implementations (consider sponsoring them, too, for all their work maturing ZMK?). And for other individual help.