Software

Software support for the YUNZII Keynovo IF98 is device-specific, and YUNZII provided the installer directly as the keyboard was still in the pre-order phase at the time. A public release version should be available soon enough, and mine was simply V1.0, April 8 2022 for the date. The installer was all of 4 MB, and installation is straightforward, but there is no option to have a start menu item or even agree to any terms and conditions. Both are preemptively selected for you. The final installation takes a little over 10 MB, which is not too surprising since the software is only for this product, and it is light on system resources when running.


With the keyboard connected to my PC, the software drivers recognized it immediately. Opening the software for the first time, I was actually impressed by how smoothly everything worked without any bugs and no language barriers, and it even scaled well with high DPI displays! The unidentified MCU might well be a clone of a more established controller, but everything is laid out evenly and clearly with Keynovo adopting a typical menu and tabs approach.

Seen above is a walkthrough of customizing the YUNZII Keynovo IF98 with its dedicated software tool, which includes the option to easily create, remove, and select software profiles. There is no settings tab at all, so this version is currently stuck in English, or whichever language you picked during installation. YUNZII states that the settings tab will be added soon, and there is no firmware updater tool either, let alone in-driver means to update itself. The ability to do a keyboard reset is present, with the home page defaulting to key mapping with a virtual keyboard on the screen. This is the black version of the IF98 with the badge removed and the four default keys added to the top-right corner. Selecting any of these keys brings up key customization options, including multimedia shortcuts, key combinations and macros, and of course other keys should you wish to try a different typing layout. It's not exhaustive—there are no mouse actions or OS/program shortcuts, for example—but does the job by meeting expectations. The lighting section is self-explanatory with several preset effects and associated options, including brightness, speed, direction, and any of 16.8 M RGB colors as relevant. The virtual keyboard lights up but not to reflect the various effects, which can be irksome since the names don't always clarify what they do. The per-key lighting effect is where the onscreen keyboard is more handy. Macro recording works well, and saved macros may be assigned to keys in the default menu. It's best done with profiles in the absence of dedicated layers, with different profiles for various games or programs an option.