Igor's Keys

Igor's Keys makes the extra keys of the CHERRY CyMotion Master XPress keyboard work on Windows 10 and 11. It replaces Cherry's old KeyM@n program, which no longer works on current Windows.

Unofficial. Igor's Keys is an independent hobby project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by Cherry. CHERRY, CyMotion and KeyM@n are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to say which keyboard and which old program this works with.

Made for one keyboard

Igor's Keys was written for, and tested on, exactly one keyboard:

Keyboard	CHERRY CyMotion Master XPress, with five XPress keys down each side of the keyboard
Model	G86-21050 (sold under part numbers such as G86-21050PLAAAA and G86-21050SLAAAA; the letters after the number differ between versions)
Connection	USB + PS/2. Igor's Keys needs it plugged in by USB.
Seen by Windows as	USB device 046A:0023
Originally supported	Windows 98 SE / ME / 2000 / XP with Cherry's KeyM@n software

Product listings: Icecat datasheet (G86-21050PLAAAA), Melcomp (G86-21050SLAAAA).

The program only listens to a keyboard with that USB id and ignores every other device. Other keyboards, including other Cherry models, are not supported.

It is a small program that sits in the notification area (next to the clock) and waits for the extra keys. When you press one, it does what you told it to: type a text, press a key combination, or open a program, folder or web page.

Installing

Download IgorsKeys-<version>-win64.zip from the Releases page and unzip it. (The repository itself contains only the source code; the ready-made program is attached to each release.)

1. Copy the whole IgorsKeys folder somewhere permanent that belongs to you, for example C:\Users\<your name>\IgorsKeys. Do not move it afterwards.
2. Double-click IgorsKeys.exe. A small keycap icon appears next to the clock (click the little arrow ^ there if you do not see it).
3. Right-click the keycap icon and tick Start with Windows, so it starts every time you log in.

No installation, no administrator rights, no driver. The keyboard works exactly as before for normal typing.

Windows SmartScreen or your antivirus may warn about it. The program is not code-signed, it is packed with PyInstaller, and it watches the keyboard and sends keystrokes – all things that make security tools cautious. On the blue SmartScreen window click More info → Run anyway. If you prefer, build it yourself from this source code (see the end of this page).

Slovenščina: the program switches to Slovenian by itself when Windows is in Slovenian; the tray menu Language overrides that. Slovenian manual: README.sl.md.

Which keys does it handle?

The keyboard has these extra keys:

Keys	What they do without Igor's Keys	With Igor's Keys
The 5 keys left of the letters (F1–F5 with icons) and the 5 keys right of them (F6–F10)	nothing at all	whatever you assign
Eject	nothing	whatever you assign
Volume −/+, Mute, Media player, Play/Pause, Stop, Previous, Next	Windows handles them	still Windows, unless you assign something
Calculator, E-mail, Internet/Home, Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Search	Windows handles them	still Windows, unless you assign something

Holding the KeyM@n key and pressing one of the ten side keys gives the ordinary F1 … F10 keys. That is built into the keyboard and works with or without Igor's Keys.

Out of the box only two keys are set: the first key of the right column opens your Documents folder and the second one opens your Videos folder. Change or remove those as you like.

Assigning keys

Right-click the keycap icon and choose Edit key assignments… (or double-click the icon).

1. Click a key in the list on the left.
2. Choose what should happen:
   • Type a text – for example your address or an e-mail signature. Enter in the text makes a new line.
   • Press a key combination – click Record… and press the combination on the keyboard, pick one from the common action list (copy, paste, volume, play/pause, show desktop …), or type it, for example Ctrl+C, Alt+F4, Win+E, PageDown or Enter.
   • Open a program, file, folder or web address – pick a common place (Documents, Downloads, Notepad, Google, lock the computer …), use the Browse buttons, or type a web address such as https://www.google.com. shell:Personal means your Documents folder.
   • Run several steps in a row – one step per line, for example:

     keys: Win+R
     wait: 300
     text: notepad
     keys: Enter
     

3. Click Apply to this key, then Save. Igor's Keys picks up the change by itself within a few seconds.

Test now tries the action immediately. For texts and key combinations you get two seconds to click into the window where the keystrokes should go.

For the keys Windows already handles (volume, calculator and so on) there is a box Also stop Windows' own function of this key. Tick it if you give such a key a new job and do not want the old one to happen as well.

Bringing over your old KeyM@n settings

In the editor click Import old KeyM@n file… and choose your .csf file (for example CyMotionMasterXPress.csf). You get a list of what will be imported; the keys that Windows handles by itself are left alone, and the KeyM@n+key layer is skipped because the keyboard does that on its own.

Backing up your settings

In the editor (or in the tray menu) click Back up settings… and choose where to save the file, for example IgorsKeys-settings-2026-10-11.json on a USB stick. Restore settings… loads such a file back and replaces all assignments. Every time you save, the previous version is also kept automatically in C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Local\IgorsKeys\backups (the last 20).

The tray menu

• Edit key assignments… – opens the editor.
• Reload assignments – re-reads the settings file (normally not needed, it happens automatically).
• Pause / Resume – temporarily switch Igor's Keys off without closing it.
• Start with Windows – tick to start automatically.
• Back up settings… / Restore settings… – save your assignments to a file, or load them back.
• Open log file – shows what the program did; send this file when asking for help. It never contains the texts your keys type, only how long they are.
• Open settings folder – where config.json (your assignments) and the log live: C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Local\IgorsKeys.
• Quit – stops the program until you start it again.

If something does not work

• No keycap icon? Click the ^ arrow next to the clock. Still nothing: start IgorsKeys.exe again; if it is already running, the second start simply exits.
• A key does nothing: open the editor and check that the key has an assignment and that Igor's Keys is not paused. The log file shows a line like XPress 3 pressed every time a side key is pressed, and what happened next.
• The program never crashes on a strange key press; anything unexpected is written to the log and ignored.
• Volume, media and browser keys stop working: untick Also stop Windows' own function for those keys.

For the technically minded

• The keyboard sends its extra keys on a separate USB HID "consumer control" interface. Its report descriptor declares a maximum usage of 0x23C, but several keys send larger values, which Windows discards. Igor's Keys reads the raw reports with the Raw Input API (RIDEV_INPUTSINK) and matches them against keys.json. It never registers for the normal keyboard interface, so it cannot interfere with typing.
• Settings: %LOCALAPPDATA%\IgorsKeys\config.json (plain JSON, documented in igorskeys/config.py). Log: %LOCALAPPDATA%\IgorsKeys\igorskeys.log (rotating, 1 MB × 4).
• Command line: IgorsKeys.exe --edit (editor), IgorsKeys.exe --import file.csf (import on the command line), IgorsKeys.exe --debug (verbose log), IgorsKeys.exe --first-run (also enables autostart).
• The old KeyM@n .csf format is an MFC CArchive serialization with keys stored as PS/2 scan codes; igorskeys/csf.py documents and parses it and igorskeys/importer.py converts it.
• Building from source on a machine with Python 3.11 or newer:

  cd app
  pip install -r requirements.txt
  powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build.ps1
  

  The result is app\dist\IgorsKeys\. To run without building: python main.py (tray) and python main.py --edit (editor). Discovery notes and the capture tools are in discovery/FINDINGS.md.