XPS 15 change Home and End keys to Fn + Left and Fn + Right

So @Anonymous are you guys gonna do anything about this? Seems like a ton of evidence here that you have a lot of users extremely unhappy about this. I have personally told developer friends more than once that I really like everything about my XPS except the keyboard, and that unless you all fix the home/end key debacle in BIOS/EFI settings they should hold off on purchasing this edition and purchase a one-year-old used one instead, because it's just SO disruptive to anyone who has to use the laptop keyboard regularly. Seriously y'all, please set up a BIOS/EFI setting, this is not a huge feature request....

I had the same problem. But realized that theres not much you can do to remap these keys, since the keypresses are managed on a hardware level. 

But for my usecase I just need to quickly jump to the start end end of the for coding. Leaving my solution here, maybe its usefull to someone. If you use VS code you can add these 4 usefull keybindings to your keybindings.json file. 

I sent a message to Dell requesting a BIOS update specifying fn + Left / Right as Home / End and I got the following response:

"These changes will certainly require hardware changes. As of now, I will not be able to promise a tentative time on when the changes could happen. It may require a new build altogether. However, our webistes would notify you when any such changes are made."

I don't understand why a problem like this cannot be solved via a firmware update and a hardware change is required.

Same here. It bothers me a lot.

(@sjeon: I think they must have meant firmware changes, not hardware changes)

I too am really bothered by this. My previous XPS-15 9550 had the following mappings:

Fn Left = Home  |  Fn Right = End
Fn Up = PgUp  |  Fn Down = PgDown

Yes, there was an adaptation period, as I was used to dedicated Home/End keys. But eventually it became natural, almost seemless (some combinations such as Ctrl+Shift+Fn+Left are still a bit tricky, but I learned live with it).

I now have a new XPS-17 9700. And this time I don't think I can get used to the new mappings, that is, Fn F11 = Home and Fn F12 = End). This new layout forces us to choose between two really bad options:

A) Have Fn-Lock activated, making it easier to use Home/End (although I still need to look down on the keyboard every single time) but making the use of function keys totally impractical.

B) Have Fn-Lock deactivated, making Home/End totally impractical.

As a developer, I really, really need to be able to:

1 - Easily (that is, with Fn-Lock deactivated) use function keys (F2, F3, F4, F5, and yes, F11 and F12), and
2 - Have an easy access to Home/End keys, as it used to be the case with prior models.

I am begging Dell to please, please make the needed changes to the Firmware so that Fn-Left is mapped to Home, and Fn-Right to End.

If it's not done, I don't see myself ever bying another XPS, which is really a pity, as they are great machines.

Completely agree. I won't be buying XPS again unless this is fixed. This tiny keyboard change makes it unusable

I changed my old XPS 15 9570 to a new XPS 15 9500 and was very frustrated!

That change was completely unexpected!

OK, you added separate keys for Home/End, but why remove Fn+Left/Fn+Right?!

And now my company has doubts about buying new Dell laptops for developers.

Why?! Why remove keys combinations?!

That does not sounds good... I'm kind of hoping that this representative is speaking for themselves and doesn't represent the engineering team?

If Dell were brave enough to open source their BIOS, us developers complaining about this issue would be able to fix it soon after.

Never going to happen though. So instead we just have to hope Dell sees the value in selling laptops to software developers. 

Otherwise - that new Macbook Pro starts to look really tempting. The Mac also has a cursor key layout that matches the shape of the human hand, where the ring finger is longer than the two either side, so gives a much more natural tactile feedback when your hand needs to locate back onto the cursor keys. It amazes me that laptop keyboard designers so often get this wrong. Dell had it right for a while, but then broke it again...

Exactly what I was thinking. And there's this other message:

> This is a hardware change and I wouldn't be able to promise
> would change via a firmware update. I'm truly sorry about that.

Well if not a promise, maybe a clear and definite answer would help.

You can fix this *stupid* and incredibly tone deaf keyboard layout flop on Dell laptops by using the AutoHotKey software (available at https://www.autohotkey.com/). Using this software, you can write a script that maps a hotkey combination to some other key output. For instance, I used this script to remap Alt+Left/Right to Home/End:

!Left::Home
return
!Right::End
return

While this solution works, it's unfortunate that I had to spend 2k+ for an inferior product. Will definitely *not* be recommending Dell XPS computers wholeheartedly as I used to. 

Dear Dell,

When is this issue getting fixed?

Thank you.

Thank you!  This solved my exact problem and it was giving me fits.  I use F2, F5, Home, and End extensively with my workflow and to having any of them locked behind a Fn keypress was painful.

Hopefully this gets added to the Dell BIOS, or just added natively to Windows (which is where I assumed it would be).

I am seriously considering returning my $2800 Dell XPS 9700 due to this decision Dell made. It was a very thoughtless decision and there is exactly 0 benefits for doing it. The Fn + Left and Fn + Right no longer sends any keycodes. It would have been so easy for them to just set the firmware for the keyboard to send at least SOME kind of a keycode when pressing those combinations. I wouldn't care at all what that action did (even no action at all) I would just want it to send something so I can override it with Home / End.  You can even leave the Home / End mapped to the Fn + F11 and Fn + F12 keys - it would make no difference. Please Dell, just add any keycode at all to the Fn + Right and Fn + Left key stroke! Otherwise I will be returning this laptop and switching away from Dell's laptops to avoid issues in the future.