Root How to change your Search touchkey into a Camera touchkey

[Scur]

I never use the search button on the front of the phone. NEVER. It's always been a waste of a good button to me. So I changed it to start the Camera instead.

• Must be rooted
• Navigate to /system/usr/keylayout with Root Explorer (or another file manager that will let you mount as r/w)
• Mount R/W
• Open sec_touchkey.kl with Text Editor
• Change key 217 from SEARCH to CAMERA
• Back out and save (it will automatically rename your original file as sec_touchkey.kl.bak)
• Reboot

It actually took a couple reboots before it took. At first I thought it didn't work, but after a couple days and a couple reboots it started working. Odd, but there you go.

 

[John728]

Does it change both search buttons? I think it would be cool to have each one do different things.

 

[Scur]

Does it change both search buttons? I think it would be cool to have each one do different things.

I was looking at changing the search button in the keyboard. The above method won't do it, but I'm going to figure that one out sometime in the next couple days. It's a bit different, there are several different spots that show a definition of the keyboard search button. I want to make sure to find the right ones before I throw it in. It's not hard at all, anyone can do it, as long as they backup.

 

[p_025]

The keyboard assignments should be in sec_keypad.kl. You can reassign other things in there, too. I, for one, have reassigned the emoticon button to be a Tab key instead, and the browser button to open the camera.

This kind of modding was useful on the Devour, too. On there, I changed the Vocie Commands button to be Search instead, that particular phone lacked the Search button altogether.

 

[John728]

You can reassign other things in there, too. I, for one, have reassigned the emoticon button to be a Tab key instead

How? Please be detailed.

 

[Scur]

How? Please be detailed.

Open the file. It's obvious once you're looking at it.