Block keyboard shortcuts on your devices with Intune

In this post I will show you how to block some keyboard shortcuts on your devices with Intune.

Context

See below what do we want:

- Block some keyboards combinations on devices like Windows+R, Windows+E...

- Deploy this through Intune with a script, remediation script

The solution

The solution is pretty easy and not something really new.

Actually in Windows you can find a cool feature called Keyboard filter allowing you to block some keyboard shortcut.

The solution is to enable this feature through a script and block keyboard combinations we want to block.

To get more info about blocking combinations see my post here.

PowerShell and keyboard feature

As mentioned previously, to block some keyboard combinations the feature to use is Keyboard filter.

See below how to enable the feature with PowerShell:

This feature includes two classes:

- WEKF_PredefinedKey: includes existing keyboard combinations

- WEKF_CustomKey: add keyboard combinations not found in the PredefinedKey

To find which class to use, just list existing keyboard combinations using the WEKF_PredefinedKey class.

The PredefinedKey class allows you to list existing combinations that you can block. 

You need to enable the feature first.

See below the code to do this:

If you don't find the combination you want to block in the PredefinedKey, you need to use the WEKF_CustomKey.

The WEKF_CustomKey class does not give the possibility to list existing combinations but only applied combinations.

Get the script

Click on the below picture to get the remediation script

Add keyboard shortcuts you want to block in the $Keyboard_Shortcuts variable.

What does the remediation script ?

The detection script will proceed as below:

- Check if the KeyboardFilter feature is enabled

- Check if keyboard shortcuts are blocked or not

- If not run the remediation script

The remediation script will proceed as below:

- Check if keyboard shortcuts are blocked or not

- If not, it will block them

Creating the Remediation script

To block some keyboard shortcuts, use both Detection and Remediation scripts mentioned above.

1. Go to the Intune portal

2. Go to Devices

3. Go to Remediations

4. Click on Create script package

5. Type a name

6. Click on Next

7. Click on Detection script file

8. Browse to Detection.ps1

9. Click on Remediation script file

10. Browse to Remediation.ps1

11. Click on Next

12. Click on Next

13. Click on Create