Combo Keys
When one button is not enough, press several: bind a chord such as LB + Back or LT + A to a single action. Rare-but-important actions no longer need a dedicated face button.
Capturing a Chord
- Select the target row in Key Mapping to start capture.
- Press the first button, then add the rest within 500 ms; the UI shows the full chord as it builds.
- Once complete, all buttons must be down together for the action to fire — pressing one of them alone still performs its own binding.
- ESC cancels capture; right-click a row to clear, reset, or move it to another layer.
The capture window is fixed at 500 ms; it does not follow the Tap threshold.
Three Engine Rules
- Upgrade rule: when a larger chord activates (say A+B+Y), any active smaller chord whose buttons are a proper subset of it (A+B) is destroyed. Behavior stays predictable.
- Button sharing (reference counting): one physical button can take part in several chords; the engine tracks references so they do not interfere.
- Every trigger mode works: chords support the same ten modes as single-key bindings, including all the Double variants.
Three Common Patterns
| Pattern | Example | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Second function on a common key | Basic template: R-stick click + D-Pad ↓ = drop stack | Plain “drop” already has a button; the rarer stack-drop rides on a chord |
| Variants on the trigger | RT + D-Pad ← / → = JEI recipes / uses | Direction chords on the attack trigger are easy to remember as a pair |
| Shift + chord | Hold a layer switch, then press a chord on that layer | Extends layouts further without spending Main-layer slots |
Things to Watch
- A chord requires every button to be held at once; if one of them is heavily used as a Hold binding (say LT for “use”), including it makes accidental chords more likely — choose deliberately.
- Chords respect the global Tap / Long Press thresholds too (Double modes use the Tap threshold as their gap).
- In template JSON a chord joins button names with
+:"drop_stack": "rightStickClick+dpadDown|PRESS".
Related: Seven Layers (each layer has its own chord space) and Trigger Modes (the mode set chords can use).