Software

Software support for the HYTE Keeb TKL comes in the form of HYTE's unified drivers called Nexus, which you can download from this page. The latest version at the time of testing was v1.5.560, with a 405 MB installer and a fairly trivial installation process ending in a 830 MB final installation size. I do want HYTE to offer me the choice of having a desktop shortcut and Start Menu folder though, both are automatically assumed as yes at this point. There is also a beta release that gets earlier updates, although of course brings with it the potential of more bugs too. I understand the current beta release has fairly prominent bug fixes though, in addition to a few feature updates to the Keeb TKL. However, I do not use beta drivers as a rule to keep things consistent in terms of what the average end user will experience.



Make sure the keyboard is connected before opening Nexus, albeit you will notice there's a lot you can still do without the keyboard widget in place. The software will go over the updates in its latest version before prompting you to select a few user preferences, including some that affect how the program works and loads your CPU. I really appreciate this and feel more manufacturers could stand to learn a thing or two from HYTE. The home page is aiming to be a control panel for your system, including offering real-time metrics of your CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. It scales beautifully with display resolution and Windows scaling level, has a maximize option, minimizes to the system tray as needed, and honestly is way smoother than I expected even with the video wallpapers active. I didn't notice an appreciable change in system load either, but your mileage may vary.

The video above goes over the software customization on offer with the Keeb TKL and HYTE Nexus at the time of testing, and there's a lot to discuss here. First up, I am not sure that Windows Glass-like blur effect works as expected. If you scroll down on the home screen to then click on the keyboard widget, you will notice the profiles and layers row at the top being blurred too, being now overlaid by a system-wide profile selector. You can still select the blurred items, but I found it more convenient to not scroll down on the home page. There are also plenty of settings to choose from, be it for Nexus in general or the keyboard. This is where you can update the firmware and select what the hardware lighting effects will be, since pretty much everything else relies on the software running in the background. The keyboard module is mostly about key assignment and macro recordings, where we get a ton of options to be fair. There are helpful cues for everything here, albeit I found them missing on the equivalent options for the two rollers and had to rely on the online Nexus tutorial to better understand what the icons meant. Two profiles isn't a lot though, especially with the software so important anyway, although at least you get four layers each to help alleviate the pain. I also wish there was an easier way to assign a profile to a game, seeing as how this is marketed for gamers. Speaking of which, notice how there's no lighting control in the keyboard widget?

This is because HYTE does lighting a bit different from others. It prefers you to be in the HYTE ecosystem, and now I also understood why HYTE sent a CNVS RGB deskpad with the keyboard. There's an entire universe at your disposal thus, with the individual products being "planets." You can move things around to better match how they are positioned on your desk, and then choose from a selection of universal lighting options to have a cohesive product lighting effect. HYTE does provide a lot of options here, including several animated effects, an audio visualizer, coordinating the lighting based on a static image or GIF, having everything be a set color, and some actually cool options allowing you to control the brightness and speed of said effects based even on the time of day. I am not sure how many people will use this, but it's still something new that doesn't feel there just for the sake of it. The firmware lighting effects (hardware options) cover some more generic ones such as a rainbow wave, breathing mode etc. that you can also cycle through without having Nexus running. That said, I had a replicable bug here with screen mirroring that always crashed as seen in the video. HYTE said the latest beta might well be worth trying out, yet even that did not solve the issue. I understand HYTE support is aware of my bug though, and hopefully there will be a fix sooner than later. I am also told this is not something others have experienced, albeit I really don't know how many people have the Keeb TKL on hand at this point. Overall I'd say having some form of per-key lighting control and layers would be nice, but I am impressed with Nexus in its current state and look forward to feature updates and bug fixes coming up.

[Update (December 4, 2024): Nexus v1.5.578 is available now which should hopefully have the desired updates in it.]