Originally published at: Adding keyclicks to my Apple laptop increased my happiness | Boing Boing
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If you’re working in your own office or semi-seclusion, then rock on, ya crazy mutant!
If, however, you’re THAT GUY™ in the middle of the open office directing a clackity roar onto your seatmates’ attempts to be productive, then I hope it has an earbuds-only mode. 
- This memory brought to you by flashbacks from the Cherry MX Blue incident of 2015
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Oh my god, work near people? Well, wait. Anything near people?
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Adding keyclicks to my Apple laptop increased my happiness
“Getting the Love You Want” - Some imago relationship therapist probably
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Min reqts = macOS 12.4.
Oh, well, Maybe I’ll get there one day.
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Well, Rob posted about it here: Klack: a Mac app that emits a "satisfying sound" whenever you press a key | Boing Boing
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Literally everything in nature that we interact with has a strong tactile dimension, and the human sensory apparatus is very tuned to this multisensory experience (the interaction between touch, sound and vision at the very least). This awareness is crucial to our extreme ability to use tools, among other things. Technologies that make the devices we interact with less tactile without other major advantages inevitably just feel worse to use . Low profile laptop keyboards are a great example of this - there are definitely great ones out there, but those are typically characterised by crisp tactile feedback at the very least - and often sound too. While I don’t necessarily agree with mechanical keyboard fanatics on everything, the pleasure of interacting a device with a pleasantly tuned balance of tactile and audio feedback can’t be denied. Of course there are tons of other factors in play, like the social aspect of noise and bothering others, noise sensitivity and individual preferences, but the value of tangible feedback from devices still can’t be denied.
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Very cool. Clicking sounds was probably more than half the reason I ended up with a mechanical keyboard. $4 was certainly cheaper than what I paid.
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me too. Just got one for the office a couple of weeks ago. I like the LEDs but it is the click that sealed the deal for me.
Now if they’d just deliver the PANIC keycap replacement for the ESC key that I’d ordered, I’d have it set up just the way I like it.
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… if key clicks are good then why are mouse click noises so so bad 
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I highly recommend Loud Typer
Zero latency, very accurate sounds for traditional typewriters (just holding down Shift, releasing Shift, you hear the typebars adjust-- many modern TV shows, like the last scene in Wednesday get this wrong). A large set of office-friendly muted sounds (try “Simple” you just get a small thock). Many sounds including all the traditional typewriter sounds, meet my spouse’s approval sitting next to me, who is rather auditorily sensitive.
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You know what’s even worse than the mouse clicks?
The sound of cheap-ass mouses being dragged across unpolished wood desks.
For some reasons, in our new open space we are not provided mouse pads, I bring my own, but nobody seems to care.
I find it distractingly similar to someone eating snacks close to my ears, but maybe it’s only me.
Now, please, excuse me: I have some clouds to yell at.
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maybe needs a rumble pack too. there’s something about the whole desk shifting when you’re shifting that sound alone can’t quite match
Good question! I’d say it comes down to the mouse (I don’t mind the clicks on my Logitech G603 at home, but plenty of cheap office mice have really grating sound profiles), but YMMV? If I were to speculate, I’d say that the pitch probably plays a major role, as higher pitched sounds are generally more annoying to listen to, and a mouse click will almost always be higher pitched than a keyboard key, both due to the mouse using a microswitch instead of a larger keyswitch, the shape of the mouse probably acting as a bit of a resonance chamber, and the mouse having less mass to absorb and deaden high pitched noise. There’s a reason why mech keyboard enthusiasts use foam, laser cut rubber gaskets, lubricated key switches and even suspended “gasket mounted” PCBs in their keyboards - all this work is done to deaden the “pingy”, immediate and high-pitched noise a mechanism like this might produce and make the keyboard produce a more pleasant “thock”.
The lack of rhythm/quasi-random nature of mouse clicks might also make them more annoying to listen to than the relatively regular sounds of someone typing on a keyboard. An ongoing and relatively even sound is far easier to adapt to than one that shows up at random intervals.
This is why I use Cherry Browns with sound damping on my desktop keyboard, by choice. It’s the best of both worlds.
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I use browns at home and reds at work. Both with o-rings. It gives me that wonderful tactile sensation without sounding like a cacophony to those around me.
When I worked in an open office hellscape I had a coworker who loved greens and blues and it was obnoxious as hell.
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