Daily Ramble 36: How do I Change the Keybind in Star Trek Online
The biggest problem I had in the first half hour of Star Trek Online was trying to figure out how to change the keybind for F12. F12 is set to rearrange the HUD. That’s not a command I really execute much – perhaps once or twice…maybe again when I’ve gotten a bunch of new skills and added an action bar or two. But to have that command assigned to a fairly accessible key is kinda crazy – there are so many other commands and actions that could be placed on that key. Particularly when F12 is commonly used in screenshot apps. I’ve used a few of these and F12 has become my go-to for screenshots since Steam, Action, and I believe FRAPS bind that in their default setup.
Usually having F12 setup for rearranging the HUD isn’t too bad though since there’s an interface to change key binds in every game I’ve played in the last 20+ years. Unfortunately Star Trek Online has decided there’s no need to easily change the F12 command since the default of rearranging the HUD is so important they didn’t decide to include it in their key bind section.So what to do? I headed to the inter web to see what solutions people came up with but most just talked about creating a key bind file to reset all the keys to what I wanted. Sure, that’s a good idea in the long run but I’m just starting out the game, I don’t know enough to set everything and I don’t want to take someone’s pre-made file that is set up for endgame.
I tried using the basic commands to /bind the F12 key to nothing but that didn’t work – actually, I couldn’t figure out how to bind anything to “nothing”. So…I ended up using the UI to set the F12 key bind as the alternate key for “Pass on Loot”. I figure that’s iniquitous enough and not something that I’m gonna be using a lot. More importantly, it took the “Rearrange HUD” binding off the key so I could use it for other things…like my screenshots.
Crisis solved and I’m ready to continue my journey to body go where no one has gone before…
Daily Ramble 36: How do I Change the Keybind in Star Trek Online