Cats on Laps – Keyboard Alternatives

Does your cat like to be on your lap when you’re at the computer?  Ours loves to keep us company as we work and while adorable, his affectionate presence does make it harder to use the keyboard.

You could move the cat, but one look at his fluffy little face and soulful eyes is enough for us to know we can’t possibly commit such a crime.  Fortunately, there are less drastic alternatives we can take, which are also useful if you can’t access the keyboard or find it difficult to use for other reasons, such as missing or damaged keys or a disability.

On-Screen Keyboard

Windows comes with an on-screen keyboard built in as an accessibility feature that enables you to type by clicking on a keyboard on the screen. This allows you to ‘type’ using your mouse. Like a smartphone keyboard, the Windows on-screen keyboard offers word suggestions when typing, so you don’t have to type the whole word.

You can access the on-screen keyboard by going to Windows > Settings > Ease of Access > Keyboard and toggling on the ‘Use the On-Screen Keyboard’ option. When it’s in use, you can right-click on the icon and select Pin to Taskbar, so you can call up the on-screen keyboard with one click. If you do have access to a keyboard but want to use the on-screen option, you can activate the on-screen keyboard quickly by pressing Windows + Control + O.

Bluetooth Keyboard

You can also configure your smartphone to work with your computer as a Bluetooth keyboard. This is useful if you don’t have enough room to access a keyboard. Several apps in the Android Play Store are designed for this purpose; we found the aptly named ‘Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse’ works well but there are others with similar features.

An important note when considering this option is that the app needs to have the computer and the phone unpaired to begin with, so if you’ve already paired them, you’ll have to unpair them first. The option to unpair a Bluetooth device is in Windows > Settings > Devices. From there you’ll see a list of devices and you can select the phone and choose the Remove Device option. Then you can go through the app’s configuration screen, where it will search for devices. Select the computer from the list, and it should pair and connect, and you can then use the phone to control the keyboard and mouse.

Conclusion

So now you don’t have to move your fluffy friend and you know what to do if anything else happens to your keyboard.