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# The Leader Key: A New Kind of Modifier
If you've ever used Vim, you know what a Leader key is. If not, you're about to discover a wonderful concept. :) Instead of hitting Alt+Shift+W for example (holding down three keys at the same time), what if you could hit a _sequence_ of keys instead? So you'd hit our special modifier (the Leader key), followed by W and then C (just a rapid succession of keys), and something would happen.
That's what `KC_LEAD` does. Here's an example:
1. Pick a key on your keyboard you want to use as the Leader key. Assign it the keycode `KC_LEAD`. This key would be dedicated just for this -- it's a single action key, can't be used for anything else.
2. Include the line `#define LEADER_TIMEOUT 300` somewhere in your keymap.c file, probably near the top. The 300 there is 300ms -- that's how long you have for the sequence of keys following the leader. You can tweak this value for comfort, of course.
3. Within your `matrix_scan_user` function, do something like this:
```
LEADER_EXTERNS();
void matrix_scan_user(void) {
LEADER_DICTIONARY() {
leading = false;
leader_end();
SEQ_ONE_KEY(KC_F) {
// Anything you can do in a macro.
SEND_STRING("QMK is awesome.");
}
SEQ_TWO_KEYS(KC_D, KC_D) {
SEND_STRING(SS_LCTRL("a")SS_LCTRL("c"));
}
SEQ_THREE_KEYS(KC_D, KC_D, KC_S) {
SEND_STRING("https://start.duckduckgo.com"SS_TAP(X_ENTER));
}
SEQ_TWO_KEYS(KC_A, KC_S) {
register_code(KC_LGUI);
register_code(KC_S);
unregister_code(KC_S);
unregister_code(KC_LGUI);
}
}
}
```
As you can see, you have a few function. You can use `SEQ_ONE_KEY` for single-key sequences (Leader followed by just one key), and `SEQ_TWO_KEYS`, `SEQ_THREE_KEYS` up to `SEQ_FIVE_KEYS` for longer sequences.
Each of these accepts one or more keycodes as arguments. This is an important point: You can use keycodes from **any layer on your keyboard**. That layer would need to be active for the leader macro to fire, obviously.
## Adding Leader Key Support in the `rules.mk`
To add support for Leader Key you simply need to add a single line to your keymap's `rules.mk`:
```
LEADER_ENABLE = yes
```
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