There’s a group of people who have been silently suffering for years.
A forgotten minority, ignored by institutions, abandoned by the tech industry, left behind even by Microsoft, Apple, and the United Nations.
I’m talking about us: Italian developers forced to use the Italian keyboard layout.
Yes, that one.
The one that gives you the incredibly useful “§” key, which you have never pressed voluntarily in your entire life, but denies you the most fundamental character of the modern software era:
The backtick: `
The backbone of Markdown.
The unsung hero of code snippets.
The vital organ of shell commands.
A character so essential that GitHub should send you a condolence letter every time you try to write documentation with an Italian keyboard.
The Italian layout? It simply forgot it. Oh, but it has plenty of "useful" keys such as "§" or "ç"...
Every Italian developer has faced at least one of the following situations:
- Typing ALT+96 with the elegance of a musician playing the piano with their elbows.
- Juggling with WIN+. > move to chars > select the `
- Googling “backtick” just to copy and paste the damn symbol.
So… I decided to stop suffering.
I did what any developer does when reality refuses to cooperate:
I wrote a tool to bypass reality entirely. Or better, I vibe coded a tool to save me hours per week.
Introducing: Greg.KeySub
Available here:
👉 https://github.com/neronotte/Greg.KeySub
Greg.KeySub is a tiny Windows tool that quietly lives in your system tray — right next to a few utilities, five unnecessary Electron apps, and three icons whose meaning you’ve forgotten years ago.
Its one and only job?
Listen to the keys you press, and whenever you hit that useless §, it magically transforms it into a glorious, essential, life-improving `.
Yes, you read that right: § becomes `.
Because that key had no purpose. None.
Now, finally, it serves a higher mission.
Why You Should Install It Right Now
🎯 Because it saves time.
Write Markdown like a normal person, not like someone performing finger acrobatics.
🔥 Because it gives purpose to a key that had none.
Digital recycling at its finest.
😤 Because the Italian keyboard layout will never fix itself.
Let’s be honest. It’s been decades. It’s not happening.
⭐ Because it’s open source.
You can contribute, improve it, fork it, or just stare at the code thinking “I would’ve done it differently.”
Install it, try it, love it ❤️
Find it here:
👉 https://github.com/neronotte/Greg.KeySub
If you’re an Italian programmer who writes Markdown, this tool is like that 4 PM coffee: You didn’t know you needed it until you started using it.
Top comments (1)
That was fun reading. Bravo.
Never realized how easy I had it with regard to backticks.