Rearranging keycaps

Those who choose alternative keyboard layouts can either rearrange keycaps to match new layout or leave them intact.

Advantage of moving keycaps is that it's easier to use keyboard shortcuts when legends match your layout, also in those rare cases when you type with one hand having right legends helps a lot. Advantage of keeping keycaps intact is that it's easier to share keyboard with others and having non-matching legends forces man to touch type.

And for some moving keys around makes no difference whatsoever, those can skip the rest of the page.

There is also technical side, on some keyboards moving keycaps around is pretty straightforward on others it's a hassle. Sculpted keycaps for example can be moved within row, but moving them between rows will deteriorate touch typing experience, as keycaps from different rows have different height and shape, so mixing them together does more harm then good. Majority of mechanical keyboards have sculpted keycaps, the ones with uniform keycaps, such as DSA or XDA ones are less common, but if you happen to have one, then moving keycaps around is easy.

Majority of membrane keyboards have uniform keycaps, but not all of them are easy to move. The ones with scissor switches are usually a hassle, those are mostly used in laptop keyboards. Most of PC membrane keyboards use simple rubber dome switches and those are easy ones.

So the easiest options are common membrane keyboards with simple rubber dome switches and uniform keycaps and mechanical keyboards with DSA, XDA or other uniform keycaps.

When moving keycaps one needs to think about homing keys, on QWERTY keyboards those are FJ keys, they usually have tactile bumps or different shape to help touch typers to find home position without looking at keyboard. It's good idea to keep those two in home slots.

On about half of membrane keyboards those keys have either different orientation or slightly different shape, it's therefore worth checking bottom part of FJ keycaps to avoid force pushing them in slots where they won't fit.

Above you can see how keys are sitting in membrane keyboard, note that orientation of FJ slots differs from the rest. This is common in membrane keyboards, but not an issue in mechanical keyboards.

Keycaps can be removed using keycap puller, in case of membrane keyboards it's better to use thin metal wire keycap puller. Or if one does not have suitable keycap puller, one can carefully open membrane keyboard and push keycaps from inside.

In case of mechanical keyboards both metal wire and plastic keycap pullers work fine and they usually come with keyboard.

Below are some examples of retiled keyboards.

US ANSI keyboard with JNSF layout

US ISO keyboard with JNRF layout

US ISO keyboard with FNRS layout

US ISO keyboard with Eiþ layout

Nordic ISO keyboard with JASF layout

Norwegian ISO keyboard with Skarp layout

Ortholinear keyboard with Orthocarpus layout